Marcos’ win a ‘boon for Beijing’
>>MANILA: The decisive victory of Ferdinand Marcos Jr in the Philippines’ presidential election on Monday is set to re-shape the Southeast Asian country’s relations with China and the United States as he seeks closer ties with Beijing.
Mr Marcos, the son and namesake of the country’s former dictator, has long-standing ties with China and is seeking a new deal with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping over the contested waters of the South China Sea.
Mr Marcos’s relations with the United States, on the other hand, are complicated by a contempt of court order for his refusal to co-operate with the District Court of Hawaii, which in 1995 ordered the Marcos family to pay US$2 billion of plundered wealth to victims of Marcos Sr’s rule.
The Philippines is a fulcrum of the geopolitical rivalry between the US and China, with its maritime territory encompassing part of the South China Sea, a strategic and resourcerich waterway over which China also claims sovereignty.
In 2016, an arbitral tribunal constituted under the International Law of the Sea ruled in favour of the Philippines over China’s claim, a decision seized upon by other claimant states, as well as the US and its allies concerned by China’s construction of military installations on islands in the waters.
But in interviews during the election campaign, Mr Marcos said the ruling was “not effective” because China did not recognise it. He would seek a bilateral agreement with China to resolve their differences, he said.
“If you let the US come in, you make China your enemy,” he told DZRH Radio. “I think we can come to an agreement [with China]. As a matter of fact, people from the Chinese embassy are my friends. We have been talking about that.”
A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry said on Wednesday the two countries, “facing each other across the waters, enjoy a long-standing traditional friendship” and that China remains “committed to good-neighbourliness” under the incoming president.
Antonio Carpio, the former Supreme Court Judge who led the Philippines’ legal team at the arbitral tribunal, said Mr Marcos’s stance was a “betrayal”.
“He’s taken the side of China against the Philippines,” he said.
Rommel Banlaoi, a Manila-based security expert, said Mr Marcos, also known as Bongbong, wanted friendlier ties with China but not at the expense of ceding territory.
“He’s open to direct consultations and bilateral negotiations with China to settle their differences,” he said. “He is willing to explore areas of pragmatic co-operation with China, including the development of natural gas and oil in the West Philippines Sea.”
The West Philippines Sea is within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, but is also claimed by China. There have been repeated clashes between vessels belonging to the two countries in the area in recent years.
Mr Marcos is also keen to attract investment from China for his ambitious infrastructure agenda, said Mr Banlaoi. “The Marcoses have very fond memories of their trips to China.”
Mr Marcos’s father ruled the Philippines for 20 years until 1986 and was a close US ally but began engaging with China after diplomatic relations were established in 1975.
A year earlier, Marcos Jr, then 18, accompanied his mother Imelda to Beijing in a historic trip that paved the way for the diplomatic detente. Footage of the trip shows the beaming youngster meeting Chinese leader Mao Zedong.
It was the first of many visits. In a cable sent to Washington DC in March 2007, obtained by WikiLeaks, the US embassy reported that Mr Marcos “travelled frequently to the PRC in 2005 and 2006 to drum up business”.
A month after the cable was written, China opened a consulate in Laoag City, capital of the family’s fiefdom in the province of Ilocos Norte, where Mr Marcos was governor.
Laoag City has a population of just 102,000 in a country of almost 110 million people.