Just when you thought this couldn’t get any messier. The plot thickens.

Today the Spratlys, tomorrow Palawan

By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:11:00 02/27/2008

On Tuesday, a witness told the Senate that the Chinese insisted that the President leave her husband’s sickbed, because they were skeptical of the seriousness of the government with regard to the national broadband network (NBN) deal with China’s ZTE Corp. She complied, returning the favor of commissions being released in time to help the administration election campaign last May.

After repeatedly playing the China card, eventually the Chinese have to collect. What’s in it for them?

Recently, in “The Correspondents” program, the television news channel ANC’s Ricky Carandang began to zero in on what is ultimately at stake for China: the Spratlys. And what the President’s ultimate concession has been: to abandon, at least partly, the Philippine claim to part of that island chain. What Carandang reported locally has been investigated internationally, too.

Barry Wain, writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Jan-Feb 2008), puts it this way in “Manila’s Bungle in The South China Sea”: “What most observers don’t realize is that in the last few years, regional cooperative efforts to coax Beijing into a more measured stance have been set back by one of the rival claimants to the islands.”

Our government left its regional partners in the lurch: “[T]he Philippine government has broken ranks with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which was dealing with China as a bloc on the South China Sea issue. The Philippines also has made breathtaking concessions…”

How? “President Arroyo’s agreement with China for a joint seismic study was controversial in several respects. By not consulting other ASEAN members beforehand, the Philippines abandoned the collective stance that was key to the group’s success with China over the South China Sea. Ironically, it was Manila that first sought a united front and rallied ASEAN to confront China over its intrusion into Mischief Reef a decade earlier. Sold the idea by politicians with business links who have other deals going with the Chinese, Ms Arroyo did not seek the views of her foreign ministry, Philippines officials say. By the time the foreign ministry heard about it and objected, it was too late, the officials say.”

Click here for the rest of the article.

And here’s a YouTube video of Ricky Carandang’s report on the ZTE-Spratlys connection:

The Correspondents - Kung ‘di ukol, bubukol (ZTE-NBN)

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