Thank you, China!
Now, post-Hague, we have a clearer idea of what it means to be Filipino. We might be small, but we’re not powerless. We might be gentle, peaceful folk, but we fight back when we are wronged. We might not know who we are, but we’re getting there.
S alutations and messages of gratitude are in order after Tuesday’s glorious victory (à la Mandarin memorandums)!!!
First of all — and this I do without any prodding — thank you to ex-President Noynoy Aquino. While it might have cost Mar Roxas several millions of votes, ex-President Noynoy and his team stood their ground in filing an arbitration case before The Hague over pursuing bilateral talks (and/or — Lord have mercy — war) with China. In a rare show of hardiness, the Aquino administration came out on top after three full years of criticism as to why they seemed to be wasting away as the Chinese reclaimed and built a 10,000-foot airstrip, lighthouses, provisions for radars, and even cement plants on the disputed islands. This triumph in court is the first time since 2010 that ex-President Aquino’s oft-repeated line “Pinag-aaralan na po ng mga eksperto ang sitwasyon (i.e. ‘wag na po kayo makialam),” proved to be true and correct. Bravo, Citizen Aquino!
Kidding aside, the win in the Netherlands is monumental for it gives our claim a soul — a reason for being — that should last longer and be more potent than the temporal edifices China put up. While the victory might be “unenforceable” (forgive the legalese), it is the timeless and hopeful idea of us winning over giants that will prevail. That and, of course, the affirmation of our rights to the West Philippine Sea. We now have the responsibility to move beyond the abstractions of International Law towards taking concrete steps and claiming what is rightfully ours. Hopefully, this would not involve our current President confronting trespassing Chinese ships in a jet ski while carrying a Philippine flag (as he had once promised).
Next in the long line of congratulations are the 48 delegates who made the victory possible and the three-year nonviolent wait tolerable. Admittedly, the fact that the case was handled by a heavily funded team of experts, judges, and academics was comforting. If it were up to me, I’d set up an office where all 48 of them would continue to work in synergy. (Replace majority of the 24 senators and take half-terms each, maybe?) Unlike the way the Aquino administration handled the Sabah claims (i.e., ignore even its own countrymen until the issue subsided), the team it sent to The Hague was a powerhouse. Had they been alive in President Quezon’s time, their combined expertise would have won us independence from the Americans way earlier than 1946. Most notably, as a teacher of literature, I particularly enjoyed former Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario’s use of King Arthur’s words from T.H. White’s novel, The Once and Future King. Indeed, as Arthur had pondered in chapter after chapter, “might does not make right.” But it is, in fact, the opposite — right makes might. There is much President Duterte can learn from this tiny nugget of wisdom.
Of course, there are the Filipino people to be thankful for. Apart from the obvious fact
that our taxes paid for the arbitration case, we, collectively, have exercised a profound form of restraint. Instead of spitting on the Chinese nationals who reside within our shores (as our OFWs report the Chinese are wont to do to them), we turned to legal protests against China and the US, both threats to our sovereignty. Our fisher folk (as if they had a choice) neither took out their knives nor did they throw dynamite at the throng of Chinese fishermen crossing the line and poaching in our seas. We even continued our patronage of budgetfriendly China-made products (as if we had a choice), not responding to hastily-made calls on Facebook to cut all ties with the Chinese. And save for a number of embarrassingly racist posts online and on paper — some by one of our National Artists — we weren’t too cocky in fighting for our land. (Or, at least, we policed ourselves.) In the years that we’ve been tackling this issue, it is safe to say that we have matured politically, no matter how minute, to the tune of globalization. (Or perhaps, we have drained a significant dose of nationalistic pride.) So the pre-Hague years are now in what we might call our collective memory (a pretty forgetful memory, though). Now, our task is to process it all.
Here is where we can finally thank China. Beyond their many contributions to Filipino society, made even more apparent today by films, festivals, food, and the plethora of Filipino-Chinese scholars, we have to thank the Chinese state for bringing us to this point in our nationhood. In our still unripe conception of a national identity, this experience is golden. It is a well-known sociological concept that in recognition of an out-group, an in-group is strengthened. In plainer terms, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” — though somehow divided, we united against this out-group. While China is not an enemy per se, having an out-group clumps us together and makes it easier for us to determine who we are and who we are not.
Now, post-Hague, we have a clearer idea of what it means to be Filipino. We might be small, but we’re not powerless. We might be gentle, peaceful folk, but we fight back when we are wronged. We might not know who we are, but we’re getting there.
So in this same spirit, we must discuss whether ex-President Aquino’s EDCA — the American occupation of Filipino military bases — makes sense or not, when we practically expelled one foreign state in exchange for another; discuss whether we should push through with K- to- 12’ s long- term goals of exporting labor or not; discuss if we should risk building national industries or continue surviving on BPO and OFW remittances; discuss whether these ideas of territory and sovereignty still apply in this flattened, globalized world.