Marcos: Pusillanimous with US, audacious with Dutertes
I WAS stunned by a column in this paper last week by a writer whom I would have expected to have, being an academic, more respect for data. The piece was entitled “The audacity of President Marcos, Jr.”
This is sycophantic writing at its worst. Not even Marcos’ truest believers — not even his wife Liza, whom I would call decidedly audacious for allegedly intervening in state matters — have ever called Marcos “audacious,” except when he decided to run for the presidency.
Marcos has not undertaken any move, made a pronouncement in his two years in office that one could call “audacious.” Here are a few synonyms of the word to help you see how ridiculous that description of Marcos is: brave, bold, daring, fearless, intrepid, brave, unafraid, unflinching, courageous, valiant.
I felt I was reading what was either a sophomoric Palace press release, or an outright application for a government post.
To contrast Marcos from his predecessors — and to show how crucial it is to our country’s future that a president must be truly audacious — President Duterte was certainly audacious in undertaking his war against drugs, which as in all wars had its collateral-damage killings, for which his critics are demanding that he be made to suffer for it. Duterte was certainly audacious in cutting our century-long vassalage to the US, which is still the global hegemonic superpower, but from which relationship we are missing the benefits of a closer connection with the emerging superpower, our neighbor, China.
Even President Benigno Aquino III undertook an audacious move in ordering the investigation and the prosecution of those involved in the pork barrel scam.
Impeachment
Not all of a president’s audacious moves benefit the country, though. Aquino III made Congress a weapon to remove by impeachment Chief Justice Renato Corona in order for the Supreme Court to reverse its decision that gave Hacienda Luisita only P300 million compensation, a fraction of the P3 billion his Cojuangco family wanted. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was audacious in running for election in 2004 to prevent the return of the ousted president Joseph Estrada through his surrogate, the popular actor Fernando Poe Jr., which would have been catastrophic for the country.
Arroyo was audacious in getting the expanded-VAT law passed in 2005, which further made her unpopular but which laid the foundations of sustainable economic growth at a time of global financial crisis.
It is easy to see how baseless that article claiming Marcos to be audacious was because it presented only two arguments for the writer’s amateurish paean.
First, the writer claimed Marcos was audacious in engaging in a “world tour” and proved his critics wrong since “what we got in return were investment commitments.” Audacious in strutting in the world capitals feeding his ego and staying in the poshest hotels costing Filipinos a hundred million pesos? Doesn’t this writer read his own paper or even other papers? Foreign investments into the country have drastically shrunk under Marcos.
Investment
I’ve written several pieces that presented Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas data showing the President’s trips have not yielded a single major foreign direct investment, despite all the press releases after each of his trips that claimed billions and billions of commitments were generated. Trade and Industry Secretary Alfredo Pascual reportedly resigned as he couldn’t stand the Palace press releases attributed to the Board of Investments that Marcos charmed investors in committing “billions of dollars” in foreign investments — when there were embarrassingly few. Foreign investments into the country have been going down, especially in 2024, in which the $74 million reported monthly inflow for June was the lowest ever since 1985.
Capital from China has gone down precariously from $276 million in 2019 at the height of Duterte’s administration to, under Marcos, $16 million in 2023 and from January to May this year to $4 million.
Actually, foreign direct investments from all countries fell by a huge 44 percent, from $2.29 billion in 2019 to $1.29 billion in 2023. The decline would have been steeper if the BSP — as it should not have done — hadn’t classified as a foreign investment about $700 million that the Aboitiz Group spent to get a 40 percent stake in the local Coca-Cola Bottlers, as the local group could have sourced such money only from the local financial market unless it has foreign accounts abroad, e.g., the British Virgin Islands.
Why the Philippines isn’t getting much foreign direct investment doesn’t require much analysis. Marcos has not moved much in convincing the world business community that he is moving audaciously in correcting the country’s deep-rooted disincentives, which a US State Department report summarized as follows: “Poor infrastructure, high power costs, slow broadband connections, regulatory inconsistencies, a cumbersome bureaucracy and corruption remain disincentives to investment. The Philippines’ complex, slow, redundant and sometimes corrupt judicial system inhibits the timely and fair resolution of commercial disputes. Traffic in major cities and congestion in the ports remain barriers to doing business.”
What?
What among these factors has Marcos tackled, or started to tackle, or announced that he will tackle? Not a single one. His single obsession was the establishment of the Maharlika Investment Fund, intended to be as sovereign fund. A year after law created it, it hasn’t made a single investment, not has it attracted any other foreign capital to join it.
The sycophantic writer’s second argument that Marcos has been an audacious president because “he gave our country back its backbone, as he forcefully asserted our rights over our maritime zones. He continued to pound on our sovereign rights granted by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and affirmed by the arbitral tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
That statement merely shows how colossally and pathetically ignorant Marcos and his sycophantic writer are. They are ignorant or refuse to see that while the exclusive economic zone gives sovereign rights as defined by the Unclos, much of this zone in the Spratlys has been claimed by China as its sovereign territories centuries before Unclos took effect in 1974.
Book
A new book by Prof. Anthony Carty, a respected historian, scoured the archives of the British and French foreign services and presented documents that the two superpowers of that age had recognized China’s sovereignty over the Paracels and Spratlys — the biggest island groups in the South China Sea. He pointed out that his research showed that it was solely the US which obfuscated China’s inarguable claims of sovereignty on ideological grounds, that as one top American diplomat right after the war said: “[The] Paracels and the Spratlys must not fall into communist China’s hands.” The US had emerged as the hegemon right after the war and one of its first moves was to stop these islands in the South China Sea to be returned to China.
This is a fact, not an opinion, which the US obfuscates through its massive propaganda, to portray China as an aggressor. Unclos affirmed our sovereign rights but did not reject China’s sovereign claims. It is not the Permanent Court of Arbitration that “affirmed” the Philippine claim but merely a five-man panel of anti-China “arbitrators.”
To claim that Marcos was audacious in quarreling with China is ridiculous. He merely made the country a puppet of the US, which is after all still the world’s hegemon, whose strategy in Asia to contain its rival, China, is focused on the Southeast Asian countries’ maritime disputes with the emerging superpower as a wedge to prevent them from allying with it.
It was so obvious to Asean leaders that it was the first time for Marcos to say such harsh, undiplomatic words to the Chinese premier because US State Secretary Antony Blinken was in the same meeting. Marcos, in fact, in so many words, said what Blinken would later say. He complained in the China’s “dangerous and provocative actions” in the South China Sea; Marcos would expound: “We continue to be subjected to harassment and intimidation.”
Only the Philippines, because of its pusillanimous president, was gullible enough to believe the US lies. Not a single one of the Asean leaders — compared to whom Marcos is an intellectual and political pygmy, such as Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim, Singapore’s Lee Hsien Long, and Vietnam’s Võ Văn Thưởn — share Marcos’ antagonistic view of China. Vietnam, the other major claimant in the South China Sea, which even had fought bloody battles there against China, has chosen that emerging superpower as the main engine to push it toward full economic development.
Ridiculous
It is so, so ridiculous to say Marcos gave the country its backbone; he made the US our backbone, which could have disastrous consequences if ever a war breaks out between the two superpowers. Marcos by far has been this country’s president most pusillanimous to the US.
Marcos indeed has made audacious moves, but not in a way that unites and strengthens our nation but only to perpetuate his dynasty’s power when he steps down in 2028, even if it weakens our constitutional system.
Just two years in power and having hardly done anything to boast about, he, through his cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, has been audacious — in fact truthless — in going after the Dutertes, without whose support he would not have become president. He was audacious in persecuting his formerly biggest ally by using the Congress to investigate “in aid of legislation” alleged crimes in which the former president and his main officials would be implicated, such as those spawned by the online gaming enterprises which flourished during his term and, more importantly, purported extrajudicial killings that occurred in the wake of his war against drugs.
Marcos’ audacity in his persecution of Duterte is ruthless. His intention is not to give justice to alleged victims of Duterte’s war on drugs but to demonize the Dutertes so their political force would be so much weakened in the May 2025 mid-term elections. That will put Congress, especially the usually independent Senate, under Marcos’ complete control. In that situation, he could easily call for a convention to amend the Constitution, either to allow him a second term or a change to a parliamentary system in which he would be prime minister. What audacity indeed.
We are fast falling behind our neighbors, even behind the war-ravaged Vietnam, by any measure used (see table). It would take much audacity to undertake drastic reforms and programs — one that cries out to be launched is that against corruption — to change our society before it is too late.
Marcos, after two years in power, has demonstrated he does not and never will have such audacity nor the wisdom even to see what’s required. What is so tragic, and even catastrophic for us in the long run, is that the Congress that he controls has focused on suppressing his former ally Duterte, thereby adding another fissure in our body politic — the Mindanao bloc against the Ilocos.
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
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Website: www.rigobertotiglao.com
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Marcos: Pusillanimous with US, audacious with Dutertes
Source: Breaking News PH
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