The top diplomat

During the 2016 election campaign, candidate Rodrigo Duterte told his running mate, Alan Peter Cayetano, that if they won, the vice president would get a Cabinet post.

Discussing the possible position, Cayetano remembers telling Duterte, “I’ll get the foreign, you can have the affairs.”

Cayetano was joking, but Duterte took it seriously, and remembered it even when his running mate landed a far third in the race for vice president.

So the decorous Perfecto Yasay Jr., Duterte’s friend from college days, never stood a chance of serving longer, as he had hoped, as secretary of foreign affairs. Yasay was always just a seat warmer, in office only until the lapse of the one-year prohibition on the appointment of losing candidates to government posts.

Now Cayetano must be enjoying his job enough not to want to return to the Senate in 2019. His clan, after all, can be represented in the chamber by his sister Pia, currently a congresswoman representing the family bailiwick of Taguig. And unlike Joseph Estrada’s two sons, it looks like the Cayetano siblings map out political plans by consensus.

Even if no campaign promise was made, Duterte would probably have replaced Yasay anyway with someone less mild-mannered. Cayetano, while amiable in person, was pugnacious at the Senate. And unlike Yasay, who seemed to think he had to put out fires set off by Duterte in the international community, Cayetano is making no apologies but mainly explaining the reasons for the policies, actions and statements of the President, who is the architect of the country’s foreign policy.

* * * The architecture is under close scrutiny, with critics saying the President is selling out the country to foreigners, specifically in the South China Sea dispute.

With surveys indicating high public dissatisfaction with the administration’s handling of the dispute, Cayetano has been explaining the President’s “independent” foreign policy to various sectors. The other Monday, Cayetano briefed us at The

STAR office. There were three main points in his presentation.

One, Duterte’s friendly stance toward China has paid off better for the Philippines than if the country takes a belligerent approach toward Beijing.

Two, Duterte is telling the truth when he says that he would one day raise with his Chinese friends the ruling of the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which invalidated China’s ninedash-line claim over nearly the entire South China Sea, and awarded the Philippines “sovereign rights” over Mischief (Panganiban) Reef, Second Thomas (Ayungin) Shoal and Recto or Reed Bank.

The court also ruled that China violated the Philippines’ rights by preventing Filipinos from fishing in Panatag or Scarborough Shoal off Zambales, which was declared a common fishing ground that does not belong to any country.

The third point raised by Cayetano is that the two countries will likely forge ahead with joint exploration for oil or gas within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea.

Cayetano brushed aside observations by individuals such as acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio and former solicitor general Florin Hilbay that this is unconstitutional. Opponents of the latest push for Charter change say the proposed federal charter will remove any ambiguities and pave the way for the joint exploration.

* * * Being a hilaw na Tsinoy and understanding the Chinese character a bit, I believe Duterte’s friendly overtures are in fact compelling Beijing to temper its activities in contested waters. At least it hasn’t built an artificial island on Panatag Shoal.

But its militarization and fortification of artificial islands continue. And we’re still waiting for Duterte to assert Philippine sovereign rights, upheld by the UN-backed court, over Panganiban Reef off Palawan.

The foreign affairs chief has gone head-to-head – as punsters have happily described the word war – over Panatag with former president Noynoy Aquino, under whose watch the Philippines filed the arbitration case.

Aquino’s critics blame him for filing the arbitration case that they say prompted Beijing to launch its artificial island building all over the South China Sea. Defenders of the arbitration stress that Beijing was planning the island building all along, and the Philippines has wasted its victory, which could have been used to muster international support for peacefully stopping China’s expansionist moves.

Cayetano is correct in pointing out that sovereignty, which involves territory, isn’t the same as sovereign rights, which refers to economic entitlements. But how can Filipinos assert economic entitlements in a reef occupied by a foreign power? Can Filipinos fish within 500 meters of Panganiban Reef, which China began occupying in 1995, long before the arbitration case was filed?

Why are Chinese even “allowing” Filipinos to fish in Panatag?

When Malacañang presented to the media Filipino fishermen to show that they were in fact engaged in “barter” with Chinese authorities in Panatag, the show went badly wrong. Fielding questions from the media, the fishermen complained that the barter was forced and their catch was seized from them, with the Chinese picking the best of the catch and setting the value for the “trade” at whim.

Such incidents are unlikely to improve Filipino perceptions, as reflected in surveys, on the way the Duterte administration is defending the country’s sovereign rights and sovereignty. But Cayetano is unfazed.

The job of the country’s top diplomat does not involve firefighting, which implies that the President is wrong. It’s defending, which entails telling the world why he is right.

Cayetano faces an uphill battle, but he looks all geared up for the fight.