By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS
FORMER President Fidel V. Ramos said there are some things he has to discuss with President Duterte before he agrees to be the latter’s special envoy to China.
Duterte made the announcement during a tribute to him by his fellow Bedans at Club Filipino in Greenhills last Thursday and Ramos said, “It was noisy, there was no time to talk about it.”
Ramos said he is elated by Duterte’s confidence in him for the important job of repairing relations with China especially in the wake of the humiliation that had been rendered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration to the Asian behemoth in the case filed by the Philippines against its nine-dash lines and other activities in the Spratlys. But he said he is 88 years old.
Ramos also said being special envoy does not entail just going to China and talking with the leaders. “You have to plan. Several plans. Plan A, Plan B, etc. You need a staff to be effective.”
He said those are some of the things that he has to discuss with Duterte.
Duterte could not have chosen a better person to speak for him and the country in the negotiations with China, who still controls Scarborough Shoal, 124 nautical miles away from Zambales. China has also built installations in seven reefs in the Spratlys and despite the ruling that the artificial islands have caused massive damage to the corals and the marine environment, the Chinese are not expected to leave the area.
Ramos knows the realities on the ground. He knows the complexities of dealing with China.
It was during the Ramos presidency that the Chinese occupied Mischief Reef, 130.5 nautical miles west of Palawan, almost two years after he made a state visit to China in May 1993 and he and President Jiang Zemin pledged peaceful resolution of conflict between the two countries.
On Feb. 5, 1995, Filipino fishermen discovered installations built by the Chinese in Mischief Reef which must have started in late 1994. Diplomatic and military experts relate it to the Philippine granting of an oil exploration permit to Alcorn Petroleum to collect seismic data in Reed Bank, which is also being claimed by China.
The Ramos government protested China occupation of Mischief reef. What China said were just shelters for fishermen have now become military facilities.
To internationalize the issue, the Ramos government arranged a media visit to Mischief Reef in May 1995. Accompanied by Major General Carlos Tañega, then the chief of the Western Command, a group of 38 local and foreign journalists sailed aboard the vintage BRP Benguet despite protest by China. The Chinese blocked the navy ship but was not able to stop a helicopter with photographers flying over the Reef to take images of their installations.
The Mischief Reef incident spurred the need for a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. A Declaration for a Code of Conduct was signed in 2002 by ASEAN and China. The Arbitral Tribunal’s decision should hasten the conclusion of the more binding Code of Conduct.
Despite the Mischief Reef incident, communications with China during the Ramos administration was never severed. Relations never worsened to the level during the Benigno Aquino III presidency.
When the Philippines hosted the APEC Leaders summit in 1996, Jiang came and even extended his stay into a state visit. (Xi Jinping also came to Manila in last year’s APEC Leaders meeting but the strain of the relationship was obvious). Jiang and Ramos even had a good time singing western ballads during the state dinner.
As former president and a military officer, Ramos knows the virtues of patience especially if one lacks military muscle. He said his guideline is caution, sobriety and tolerance.
There are some concerns that China’s defeat in the legal arena might make it do something drastic like tighter control of Scarborough shoal and boarding of BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin shoal.
That’s where the role of a special envoy is important.
In the forum at the University of the Philippines last Friday, former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza related a meeting with the late Deng Xiao Ping and Ferdinand Marcos in Beijing. With Mendoza was Foreign Secretary Carlos P. Romulo, who was formerly United Nations Secretary General.
Mendoza said Deng and Marcos agreed that they should talk about the Spratlys but they should not bring in the United States, Japan and the United Nations. Just the Philippines and China.
Marcos said that the agreement should have an arbitration clause in case the talks reach a stalemate. But Deng nixed a third party intervention. Marcos asked, “What happens then if we don’t agree on certain issues?” Deng answered, “Talk some more.”
Marcos said but what if we still don’t agree. Deng replied, “Talk some more.”
FVR knows that tactic. We asked him once why he continued to talk with the Left when the negotiations seemed to be going nowhere. He replied: “Tok, tok is better than bang, bang, bang.”
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