PRESIDENT Duterte erred in challenging former Justice Antonio Carpio to a debate about the administration’s China policy and, realizing this afterwards following a talk with his Cabinet, promptly withdrew the challenge.
Carpio, however, was just too happy to tussle with the President on this issue, because a debate is just a public performance and he thinks — and we do, too — that he can project himself better to the audience than Digong. The arguments, facts and logic would be secondary. The Philippine Bar Association wanted very much to cut the President to size so that the organization readily offered its auspices to host the grand Duterte-Carpio debate.
The retired Supreme Court justice also has an edge in the matter of personal circumstances, he being just an ordinary lawyer now, and he would be taking on the challenge of a lawyer-President who murmurs and stutters and dishes out tentative arguments in staccato, half-sentence bursts.
‘The West Philippine Sea issue will figure prominently in the coming days, until the election campaign in 2022 and even beyond.’
So even at the personal risk of being called a “coward” for withdrawing a dare that he himself had proffered, Duterte walked out of the debate. The official alibi is that the Cabinet members had dissuaded him to go on with the verbal joust. The Chief Executive gave to his spokesman, Harry Roque, the responsibility of facing Carpio in such a debate, where the upper hand goes to the one who possesses glibness of tongue and braggadocio.
In hindsight, we say the senators led by Senate President Tito Sotto were the only ones providing sense into this debate on the South China Sea, particularly on the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that favored the PH over China. Sotto said, “I doubt if the country will benefit from such a debate.”
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said the debate could push “further divisiveness,” and warned that the hype surrounding the debate should not distract us into allowing the Chinese to sneak into our territory while we argue among ourselves. That would be the last thing we need for our sovereignty and territorial integrity, he said.
Senator Koko Pimentel, chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, said such a debate will not settle anything and “will only give to the entire world the impression that we are divided on the issue.”
The West Philippine Sea issue will figure prominently in the coming days, until the election campaign in 2022 and even beyond. It is best to take the cue from the senators: for us to project a semblance of unity to the world, while continuing with the internal debate quietly and responsibly.
