The Joker in the WPS battle

ALL of a sudden an analogy should stare us in the face for what all these years have been actually transpiring in the West Philippine Sea (WPS). A region of the South China Sea which has been popularly perceived as a sea of dispute between the Philippines and China could, without any of us realizing it, turn out to be a setting of the grandest Batman episode ever. For if the conflict were to be that blockbuster Hollywood serial, neither protagonists China and the Philippines is the winner in the final conflict but ever the hidden fiend, the Joker! Notice how each Batman episode ends: the Joker gets the last laugh.

Now, who is the Joker in the West Philippine Sea Battle?

Nobody has raised the question until now.

Amboys in the Philippines have been having a heyday protesting alleged China’s illegal incursion into Philippine territory, contesting Chinese buildup of forward military bases in the area as well as poaching by Chinese fishing vessels in waters alleged to be part of the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ). This continuing propaganda blitz is obviously at the instigation of the United States which stands to benefit from a sustained belligerence by the Philippines toward China. The Philippines is host to American war personnel and facilities through a number of military alliance treaties (the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) which obviously serve as US’ own forward military fortresses versus

China in US long-range world hegemonic agenda. Over the years, this US propaganda has been taking the upper hand, what with its stooges, the Del Rosario-CarpioHeydarian-Batumbakal-Rappler clique, seizing each littlest excuse to blast China, like the accidental collision between Filipino fishing boat Gemver-2 and a Chinese vessel which tended to raise the China-Philippines tension over the WPS to war level.

For his part, the past Foreign Affairs secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. has been incessant in filing diplomatic protests against China, mainly invoking the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague perceived to have upheld the Philippine position in its dispute with China over the WPS.

Thus has it come to the point that to most of the Filipino people, China has been depicted as the ruthless rampaging villain that needs to be fought. Throughout Locsin’s tenure, he filed a total of 380 diplomatic protests against China regarding the dispute. Now, if this number of protests were to correctly correspond to Chinese occupations in the WPS, then it is this concern that makes the popular antipathy of Filipinos toward China utterly misdirected. Based on the actual condition in the region, the three major nations having occupancy in the West Philippine Sea are: Philippines, 9 islands; China, 8; and Vietnam, 27 islands, with 49 outposts. Clearly from this record, granting that the Philippines’ claim to the area is valid, all the more reason it must have to protest Vietnamese incursions than Chinese, and yet all throughout the past administration, not even a squeak has been heard against Vietnam; not a single diplomatic protest filed.

For that reason, this piece begins with an analogy with the Batman telltale. It now appears that the Philippine animosity against China has been so twisted such that Filipinos completely overlook the dangers from the hidden Joker in the WPS dispute.

It should be a good thing that a group of Filipino fishermen has taken pains to sound the alarm over the sighting of Vietnamese fishing vessels poaching in the Katimugan South Reef of the Spratly Islands which is claimed by the Philippines as part of its exclusive economic zone. Pictures were taken of the Vietnamese fishing vessels and one boat “qng37097ts” was clearly identified. According to the fishermen, they have submitted their report and photos of the Vietnamese poachers to the Philippine Coast Guard, hoping that action can be taken. The fishermen aver that the Vietnamese poachers have been frequently observed to use illegal techniques such as dynamite, superlight, compressor and cyanide fishing, resulting in massive damage to the reefs that nurture the fishes. In none of the instances of similar reported Chinese poachers in the WPS has any of the cited illegal fishing techniques been involved. Quantified in terms of damage, the Vietnamese have scored 100 percent and the Chinese none, and yet in terms of propaganda, it has always been a 100 percent China destruction.

Isn’t it time we called a spade a spade in the West Philippine Sea? This problem of the Vietnamese poachers swarming into the Philippine EEZ and territory is not a new one. It’s just that from the looks of it, the problem has been given scant, if not nil, attention by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Philippine media particularly attentive to just condemning China as the villain in the WPS dispute.

In October 2018, then-Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana himself complained to reporters on the sidelines of the 79th Founding Anniversary of the Department of National Defense that, “Normally, fishing boats ng mga Vietnamese sila ang karamihan na pumapasok sa atin eh ... (fishing boats of Vietnamese are the majority of those entering our waters ...).” This admission really exposes the truth that it is not Chinese fishing boats abusing our seas.

Question now: Why isn’t the DFA recording these Vietnamese violations and reporting them properly? Why hasn’t a single diplomatic protest been filed against Vietnam in the same manner that the DFA has tirelessly done against alleged Chinese aggression?

Indeed, if the West Philippine Sea dispute were one spectacular Batman movie, we should be witnesses now to that one to stereotype finale of the villain enjoying lustily his last derisive triumphant last laugh — a laughter made even more fiendish for being done this time by a Ho Chi Minh lookalike Joker.