By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 4: A Nation with Many Strange Voices

Bilyonaryo.com chose the wrong poster boy to shame the Chinese on Christmas Day by spreading fake news that China allegedly delivered only a “sliver” of pledged economic assistance to the Duterte administration.

While I know Philippine ambassador to the US Jose Cuisia Jr is a good person, and his appointment by President Benigno S. Aquino III was a strategic move to place a respected financial and business leader in Washington DC to bolster trade and investments, it is important to point out that he was major player on how we lost Scarborough Shoal to China during his watch.

Filipino-Americans were optimistic about him but his association with Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario (who was also our ambassador to the US for five years under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo), did him in.

International maritime incident

On April 11, 2012, a set of photographs appeared in the China media that causing wide-spread indignation among the Chinese public. It showed a group of Chinese fishermen standing with their tops stripped off, on the deck of a boat and under the blazing sun, held at gunpoint by Philippine Navy soldiers.

A day before, Philippine Navy BRP Gregorio del Pilar disrupted the regular fishing activities of twelve Chinese fishing boats at Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Dao, Bajo de Masinloc), sending soldiers to forcibly board the fishing boats and arrest some fishermen.

On hearing the news, China’s Marine Surveillance (CMS) ships “Haijian75”and “Haijian 84” that were cruising nearby, along with the fishery administration ship “Yuzheng 303” that was stationed at Meiji Reef, quickly arrived on the scene to protect the Chinese fishermen.

International media reported it as the “Scarborough Shoal standoff.”

This is a highly-sensitive issue as there are nuances involved beyond merely being stopped and boarded.

To start with, BRP Gregorio de Pilar is military, the Chinese fishing boats were civilian. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), military ships generally cannot board civilian ships of another flag state on the high seas, as vessels are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of their flag state.

Secondly, Article 110 of UNCLOS provides specific exceptions (known as the “right of visit”) where a warship has reasonable grounds for suspecting a foreign civilian ship is involved in certain illicit activities like piracy, slave trade or human trafficking, unauthorized broadcasting, stateless vessels, or flying a false flag or refusing to show its flag.

But an unjustified armed boarding of a fishing boat, obviously a civilian vessel (white ship)  by a military ship (gray ship) flying the flag of another nation, is a grave violation of international law, and could be considered an act of war by the flag state.

Finally, the most-sticky issue here is the area where the incident is occurring is disputed between China’s sovereignty and Philippine sovereign rights.

Cuisia and I

This is the observation I submitted to the US Pinoys for Good Governance (USP4GG) when they called on the Filipino-American community to a forum on the incident at Oxon Hill in Maryland sometime in 2012.

The occasion became my first engagement in South China Sea geopolitics. USP4GG was supposed to be a “not-for-profit 501c3 organization” that started in California headed by Loida Nicolas, a professed Democrat, but the narrative it spoused that day was unmistakenly politically biased as they started bashing China spewing sinophobic remarks.

Being a former diplomat, I debated against the obvious emotions for jingoism as inappropriate, as I said it is not beneficial to our country taking sides in matters that could adversely affect our economy, calling attention to the fact that it would affect more than 20 million Filipino-Chinese in the Philippines who control the underground economy.

I said they could also be easily misunderstood because Nicolas had business dealing in China involving her husband’s company Beatrice International which did not prosper. She was also close to Hillary Clinton who was secretary of State at that time who advised Barack Obama to take a Pivot to Asia. 

The temperature in the room started to cool when the moderator announced that the guest-speaker had arrived during the hot argumentation, and was being acknowledged to give his keynote.

It was only when the person walked from behind me to take the rostrum that I found out who he was –Jose Cuisia Jr, who was accompanied by his wife Maria Victoria Jose.

I was surprised when the new Ambassador repeated my line calling for restraint because he said we should not push the Chinese to take an adverse position on Philippine economy just because of politics because they have substantial investments in most businesses in the country.

Yes, the timing was godsent. Just as the standoff was starting, Cuisia’s path and mine would intersect 20 years after I left the Philippine Embassy.

A friendship started especially when they learned that my wife Margot and I was a missionary couple for Couples for Christ, a potent force in the United States with more than 200,000 members at that time. Joey and Vicky are devoutly prolife Catholics.

Mixing business with public office

Throughout the succeeding months, however, the way his boss Secretary Del Rosario handled the standoff would put Cuisia in the midst of a conundrum that would serve as one of the darkest in our history.

On hindsight, President Benigno Aquino III the chief architect of our foreign policy, should have handled the standoff with extreme caution as Del Rosario was the last to have objectivity on the issue.

His foreign secretary was deeply integrated, indicating a close professional relationship and financial interest as major investor and director. in First Pacific Company Limited, a Hong Kong-based holding company led by Anthoni Salim and Manuel V. Pangilinan, that maintains a significant relationship with Forum Energy Limited, primarily through its stakes in PXP Energy Corporation (PXP) and Philex Mining Corporation, and his portfolios in the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and Metro Pacific Investments (MPIC). 

A year before the Scarborough standoff, Chinese patrol boats forced the MV Veritas Voyager, a survey vessel chartered by UK-listed Forum Energy to leave the Reed Bank (Recto Bank) resulting in the severe disruption of exploration activities, a long-term suspension of operations, and significant financial uncertainty for the company. 

Del Rosario also served as Philippine ambassador to the United States from October 2001 to August 2006,so it no longer came as a surprise to me that instead of relating directly with the Ministry of China (or through the Chinese Embassy in Manila),  he chose to address the controversy engaging in a telephone game – a popular party game where a message is whispered from person to person in a line or circle, with each player repeating what they heard to the next, often resulting in a funny, distorted version of the original message by the time it reaches the last person.

The line started with the President Aquino and Secretary Del Rosario in the Philippines, Cuisia in Washington DC would be in the middle, Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell at the US State Department connecting with Beijing through former Ambassador of China to the Philippines Fu Ying (1998 to 2000) in Beijing.

Vera files

To analyze this, I borrow the May 21, 2016, perspective of Vera Files a factchecker hostile to China that is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.

“Chinese fishermen caught in Philippine waters is not an unusual happening – be it  in Scarborough shoal in northwestern side of the Philippines or  in the Spratlys, in the southwestern part of the country. When that happens, the fishermen are charged in court and the Chinese Embassy works for their release. The case is usually handled in the provincial and regional level.

“The use of BRP Gregorio del Pilar, a warship, to arrest Chinese fishing vessels changed the atmosphere in the maritime row. The rules of engagement in a sea conflict is “white to white, gray to gray.

“ASEAN diplomats say it was a mistake for the Philippines to have sent a warship to confront Chinese fishing vessels…Instead (the Chinese)the sent at first three Chinese Marine Surveillance (CMS). Then more CMS, fishing boats and dinghies came.

“A month after the interception of the fishing vessels, there were 90 Chinese vessels in the Scarborough area – 10 CMS, 30 fishing boats and 50 dinghies – as against the Philippines’ three, yes, a grand total of three vessels- two Philippine Coast guard ships and one by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.

Vera Files said our foreign secretary aggravated the situation when, instead of quiet negotiations, he went to media and announced he was summoning the Chinese ambassador to file a diplomatic protest. He followed this up by calling for a press conference with Philippine Navy Chief Alexander Pama and Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Vice Admiral Edmund C. Tan.

“By doing so, Del Rosario raised the issue of arrest of fishing vessels to the ministerial level, a step lower than the presidential level. Diplomatic observers noted that the sight of a foreign secretary with the Navy Chief talking about the arrest of a Chinese fishermen sent a hostile message to the People’s Liberation Army, a potent force in China’s power hierarchy.”

It was an unnecessary aggravation, something that could have been handled at the department spokesmen level, Vera Files insisted.

“Talks in the diplomatic level deteriorated with Del Rosario calling the Chinese ambassador ‘duplicitous’.”

According to Vera Files, Del Rosario ran to Uncle Sam.

This was “bizarre kind of negotiation”. Del Rosario was talking with Kurt Campbell, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who was talking with Fu Ying , China’s vice foreign minister in charge of Asian boundary and ocean affairs and translation and interpretation, and only fourth in the hierarchy in China’s foreign ministry.

After talking to Fu Ying, Campbell would tell Del Rosario, relayed either through Harry Thomas Jr. ,U.S. Ambassador in Manila, or mostly through Cuisia in Washington DC.

Del Rosario would then relay whatever the Americans told him to President Aquino.

Beijing, on the other hand, looked for a direct line to Aquino and this was when Senator Antonio Trillanes IV entered the picture using contacts in Beijing which he made during a November 2011 visit.

Read why Del Rosario’s telephone game did not work:
https://rigobertotiglao.com/2023/10/06/how-us-pressured-fooled-ph-into-leaving-scarborough-in-2012/

Read why Trillanes’ back-channeling almost worked but could not
https://verafiles.org/articles/pnoy-del-rosario-responsible-for-ph-losing-control-of-scarborough-shoal

Both Trillanes and Del Rosario were working for a “simultaneous withdrawal” of  vessels in Scarborough shoal but they were not talking with each other. They were both reporting directly to the President.

The Philippines withdrew our ships from scene. China would gradually follow and around July 2, Trillanes was able to negotiate for the reduction of China’s presence to only three CMS vessels.

Poor end game

But five days after, in a Cabinet meeting, Del Rosario and DFA Assistant Secretary Henry Bensurto hard-lined on the matter of simultaneous withdrawal and lobbied President Aquino to internationalize the issue by bringing it to  the 19th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) held on July 12 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

This disregarded China’s request not to do so in exchange for totally removing the remaining three CMS at the site, and all of its presence.

ASEAN, however, snubbed the Philippine submissions to the regional forum asking for a multilateral action regarding the standoff. (And on January 22, 2013, the Republic of the Philippines formally instituted arbitral proceedings against the People’s Republic of China, seeking an occidental solution to an oriental problem.)

Vice Minister Fu Ying denied any Chinese concurrence to a simultaneous withdrawal, a message that was authored by Kurt Campbell and relayed to Cuisia.

As a result, China no longer removed its three CMS vessels from Scarborough Shoal, and started fortifying its exclusive and effective control of the feature by sending instead its coast guard to secure the area.

At the end of the day, Cuisia was the man in the middle of this telephone game that lost Scarborough Shoal for the state.

What the ambassador failed to consider was that the telephone game may have originated from China, because of the other name it has been famous for – “Chinese whispers”.

Next: Cuisia’s Malicious Claims about China’s Assistance to Philippine Economy

   

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