| |
Arroyo happy with foreign affairs
vacuum
By Miriam Grace A Go
MANILA - It was somewhat ironic that Philippine
foreign affairs secretary Blas Ople died on the day that
United States forces announced the capture of Saddam
Hussein, as the veteran diplomat was the architect
behind President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo projecting
Manila as a key ally in the "war on terror".
Ople, 76, died of a heart attack in Taiwan,
where the Japan Asia Airways plane on which he was
flying from Tokyo to Bangkok landed after declaring a
medical emergency.
The president's choice of
foreign affairs head has traditionally been a person who
could solve local political problems, while at the same
time not compromising the administration's strong pro-US
position. Ople - a former journalist, labor minister and
opposition senator - served Arroyo well on both fronts
during his almost one-and-a-half-year stint.
But
despite the importance of the foreign affairs position,
observers say that Arroyo won't appoint a replacement
for Ople as she is likely to wait until after the May
2004 presidential elections to do so - that is, if she
wins. This is because a choice now could displease
certain influential groups or sectors, which would
damage her chances in the elections.
She has,
though, assigned Under Secretary Franklin Ebdalin as
officer in charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs
(DFA) as an interim measure. Under secretaries are
career diplomats who are generally nearing retirement
without being promoted to the highest posts because
political appointees always overstep them. Ebdalin has
been given such temporary assignment as DFA acting
secretary many times in the past, whenever the president
was still deciding - make that horse-trading - which
politician to appoint as foreign affairs secretary.
Ople died about a month after the Manila visit
of US President George W Bush gave Arroyo's public
approval ratings a boost and dampened the left's
anti-American (and anti-Arroyo) campaign. The
Philippines has supported the US without hesitation, and
Ople had guided the Arroyo administration in such a way
that it is now an important strategic spot on America's
radar again.
In Arroyo's three years as
president, her choices for the foreign affairs portfolio
- she made two - were controversial. In the context of
local politics, they caused conflicts between her and
her major political supporters. In terms of
international affairs, her first choice, present Vice
President Teofisto Guingona Jr, even threatened to cause
a strain in Philippine-US relations.
When she
assumed Joseph Estrada's unfinished presidency in
January 2001, Arroyo picked then-senator Guingona to be
her vice president. Guingona was president of the
political party, the Lakas (Power) - National Union of
Christian Democrats, that adopted her when she ran for
vice president in 1998. He was also the one who
delivered in the Senate a privilege speech that exposed
then-president Estrada's abuse of power that led to his
impeachment. As a political payback expected of her by
party mates, Arroyo named him vice president. She also
adopted the policy of her late father, the former
president Diosdado Macapagal, of making the vice
president serve concurrently as foreign affairs
secretary.
The problem was, were it not for the
political accommodation which she chose to make, she
wanted another person for the DFA - a person who knew
the movers and shakers in Washington. Her personal
choice was the US-educated Roberto "Bobby" Romulo,
foreign affairs secretary during the time of president
Fidel Ramos and older son of the late former United
Nations secretary general Carlos Romulo.
Roberto
Romulo had declined to serve as DFA secretary again,
apparently burned by his experience in 1995, when the
public was outraged by his supposed failure to dissuade
Singapore from hanging a Filipino domestic helper found
guilty of killing her young ward and a fellow Filipino
domestic helper. Instead, Arroyo named Romulo the
"presidential adviser for global competitiveness",
actually a euphemism for a de facto foreign affairs
secretary.
As a result, Romulo established a
shadow DFA office which formulated the so-called
"pillars of Philippine foreign policy", which observers
said had a pro-US drift. Reportedly helping Romulo in
formulating foreign policy initiatives and positions
were then Association of Southeast Asian Nations
secretary general Rodolfo Severino and former ambassador
to Washington, Raul Rabe. Both men had reportedly been
offered the DFA portfolio before Arroyo claimed to have
had Guingona as her first choice for the job.
On
the activation of Romulo's group, Arroyo would be heard
saying that relations with the US, as well as with Japan
and China, would be the "determining influence in the
security situation and economic evolution of East Asia".
She also declared that "the military alliance with the
US is a strategic asset for the Philippines". Months
later, right after the September 11 attacks on the US,
she readily declared full support for the US's call to
fight terrorism.
Meanwhile, Guingona, the
official DFA secretary, had increasingly taken
"nationalistic" - some say leftist or anti-American,
depending on how one looked at it - stands on issues
affecting US interests in the Philippines. As a senator,
Guingona questioned the constitutionality of the
Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the US because he
felt that it would eventually pave the way for
accommodating US military installations, something
clearly banned by the 1987 constitution. Eleven years
ago, the Philippine Senate voted to close the US
military bases across the country. As DFA secretary,
Guingona was tasked to implement the VFA, so he
naturally dilly-dallied on it.
He was also of
the position that the controversial Mutual Logistics
Support Agreement between the two countries should be
ratified by the Philippine Senate because it was a
treaty - something the constitution required - and not
just to be signed as an executive agreement between
Manila and Washington.
Needless to say, his
positions on these issues went directly against the
policies recommended by Romulo's group, and which the
president was more comfortable with. Guingona was
eventually given an embarrassing exit, when Malacanang
Palace announced that it was accepting his resignation
as DFA chief when he had not submitted one. This caused
frictions, but not an exodus, among members of the
president's party mates.
When a presidential
committee started searching for a replacement for
Guingona, Arroyo's hold on the Senate was at the same
time getting shaky. Hardcore opposition senators
suddenly convinced enough colleagues to go to their side
and stage a coup against the Senate president. Ople's
vote was expected to break the impasse - he was with the
opposition, but wasn't particularly enamored by the
alternative Senate president that his allies were
backing. If Malacanang plucked Ople out of the Senate,
it would be easier to tilt the balance in favor of the
administration bloc again.
So pluck they did.
Ople's appointment, however, met strong opposition from
the so-called civil society, actually a group of
non-government organizations headed and peopled by the
supporters of former president Corazon Aquino and then
Manila archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin. These NGOs, which
helped gather the crowds that ousted Estrada and
installed Arroyo, were against Ople because he had
served for a long time in the cabinet of the late
dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Ople, however, was
most qualified for the job. He had chaired the Senate
committee on foreign relations since 1992, overseeing
some 110 international and bilateral treaties. He
sponsored a resolution on the ratification of the
Philippines-US Visiting Forces Agreement. He had taken
pride in "strongly [supporting] a new partnership with
the United States based on sovereign equality and mutual
respect". These qualifications, obviously, made him
somebody of whom Washington would approve.
Should Arroyo pick a permanent replacement for
Ople, however remote the possibility, her choices would
be the same people on the short list from which she
picked Ople in July last year: Romulo, Severino and
Rabe, people she personally preferred but who wouldn't
consider being back at the DFA, at least officially.
When Malacanang moved heaven and earth to have
Bush visit Manila in November, even for just eight
hours, the game plan was supposedly to make it appear
that Bush was endorsing another term for Arroyo. The
logic behind this was that the majority of the Filipino
masses - they who voted Estrada to office and had
detested Arroyo for replacing their hero - were
pro-American.
The strategy apparently worked,
with ordinary Filipinos now equating Arroyo's leadership
with the US giving aid and importance to Manila, and
they might just elect her for that. Thus the campaigning
president need not risk domestic ruptions by making a
new appointment.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
