Duterte’s reported secret deal
My attention was called to a March 12, 2024 Rappler feature written by Bea Cupin and entitled “DFA fumes as China makes public ‘sensitive details,’ including Duterte-era deal”. The most serious part of Ms. Cupin’s article stated an alleged act of former president Rodrigo Duterte that, in my own opinion, might amount to treason. Ms. Cupin apparently found out a certain secret deal between Duterte and China that the Philippines would not “bring in large-scale building materials to Ayungin Shoal.” It seemed that an unnamed Chinese official who reportedly spoke to the Manila Times, claimed that the Duterte administration promised Beijing that they would not be reinforcing the Sierra Madre, where a handful of soldiers are stationed at a time. Such promise, if true, would result into the eventual death of Filipino soldiers on the boat.
I wrote in this column some time ago that there is an undeclared war that Communist China has waged against the Philippines. In international law, war can be declared or undeclared. War, of the undeclared kind, commences upon the commission of an act of force by one party (like China’s occupancy of some islets) done animo belligerendi. Any act of a state like its seizure of another state’s sovereign territory is already an act of war and the aggrieved state has the right to use its forces to defend itself.
The Permanent International Arbitral Tribunal ruled that the islands in the West Philippine Sea are within the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines. The claim of Communist China that these are within their nine-dash line is, according to the arbitral tribunal, without legal basis. If these islands are within our territorial sovereignty, China’s unauthorized occupancy in some of these islands constitutes an act of war.
There being war waged by Communist China against the Philippines, undeclared though it may be, the penal provisions on treason in our laws operate. Treason is the act of betraying one’s country. According to the Revised Penal Code, “A Filipino citizen who levies war against the Philippines or adheres to her enemies, giving them aid or comfort within the Philippines or elsewhere, is liable for treason. I assume that the so-called secret deal, if true, and under which Duterte supposedly promised China that the Philippines shall not resupply the BRP Sierra Madre constitutes adherence to our undeclared war enemy.
I remember that during the campaign for the 2016 presidential elections, Duterte, then a candidate, made a statement that immensely warmed my heart. For many years leading to the 2016 polls, China had bullied our country until then President Benigno Simeon Aquino initiated that legal action in the arbitral tribunal. Duterte appeared to be unafraid of the Communist Chinese when he said that he would ride on a jet ski to the Spratly Islands and shoot all Chinese on sight or words to that effect. I did not think that he would lie to us.
That, as reported in the Rappler report, former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte entered into a “secret deal” with the Chinese makes it more compelling to let him account for his act of betrayal. He was for six years citizen number one of this country. Unlike ordinary citizens, he bound himself to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the republic. And yet, the secret deal? For what consideration?