Comment by Prof. Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
February 19, 2018
https://www.rappler.com/nation/196426-duterte-philippines-province-china
Duterte thinks that he can play off the US and China and get advantages for himself both ways. He gets Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines from Trump to assure him of military assistance for killing Filipino revolutionaries and Bangsamoro rebels. And he gets from China pledges of infrastructure projects and loans for the purpose.
But the stupid guy also gets squeezed both ways. The US prolongs all-sided dominance over the Philippines, discredits his pseudo-federal constitution with a provision for 100 per foreign ownership of land and all kinds of enterprises, prevents national industrialization and land reform and lets the hedge funds continue to starve the Philippines of the portfolio investments (hot money) that used to buoy up the GDP in most years of the Noynoy regime.
China does its own squeezing by compelling Duterte to surrender to China the sovereign and maritime rights of the Philippines over the West Philippine Sea, all or most of the trillions of dollars worth of mineral and marine resources under the guise of joint exploration and development and even the huge Benham Rise on the eastern side of Luzon in exchange for overpriced infrastructure projects and high interest loans, which upon sure failure of payment shall be converted into Chinese equity over the projects.
¨These are ours¨ are just a lot of ek-ek by a stupid guy who is a bloody bully to his own poor countrymen but an abject puppet and a coward to foreign interests. In his subjective, he might even think that he is smart by enriching himself and his gang at the expense of the Filipino people.
