(Editor’s Note: The following is an article posted by the author, a highly respected Filipino scholar and analyst, in her social media account that we are reprinting it here, with minor corrections for style, brevity, and clarity. It rightly criticized the ‘hijacking’ of our foreign policy by an official stepping out of his bounds to wreck our relationship with China and by his silence, with the implied approval of President Marcos Junior. In his own post, PCG spokesperson Commodore Jake Tarriela said he made his presentation recently at a forum on the West Philippine Sea organized by the De Lasalle-College of St. Benilde).
You know what, folks, what you are looking at in the above photo is not “academic freedom.” It is state-endorsed propaganda theater performed before university campus students.
A Commodore of the Philippine Coast Guard, a high representative of the Philippine government, standing in front of a classroom with a slide titled “Why China remains to be bully?”
It is accompanied by a caricatured, mocking images of Chinese President Xi Jinping, a grotesque, juvenile, meme-like distortions of a sitting foreign head of state.
Let us be very clear about what is wrong here, and let me address this to President Marcos Jr himself, since all of this was done and executed under his leadership.
- This is a diplomatic insult, not education. There is a profound difference between criticizing a government’s policy and ridiculing a head of state.
Serious countries criticize China’s maritime claims. Serious diplomats invoke UNCLOS and international law. Serious militaries conduct professional briefings on threat assessment.
What you do not do, if you are a disciplined officer of a sovereign state, is flash mocking caricatures of a head of state on PowerPoint like you’re hosting a late-night comedy show.
That is not analysis. That is not scholarship. That is not even diplomacy. That is “kabastusan” (disrespect, vulgarity) plain and simple.
If a Chinese PLA officer stood in front of students in Beijing showing grotesque caricatures of our President, do you think Malacañang would call that “academic discourse?” Or would it call it a hostile act?
Take note, when Tarriela speaks publicly, especially inside universities, he speaks in the name of the Republic of the Philippines.
So, what he said was not “his opinion.” It was a state/government speech delivered in uniform at an academic institution. That makes those slides a de facto statement of the Philippine government. Is this how you conduct and execute your foreign policy, Mr. Marcos Jr.?
- Our foreign policy now looks like a “meme war.” Marcos Jr. keeps saying, especially in front of Chinese diplomats and his wife, the First Lady, who usually graces and attends Chinese Embassy events as the special guest of honor, that both of them wants to pursue dialogue and avoid escalation with China. Yet, his own Coast Guard goes into a university and runs cartoon propaganda slides ridiculing Xi Jinping, the President of China.
What kind of hypocrisy is this, Mr. President and First Lady Liza Marcos? Which message should Beijing believe? The diplomatic notes from the PH foreign affairs, or the PowerPoint of Tarriela?
In international politics, signals matter more than speeches. And the signal this sends is ugly, amateurish, and dangerous: “We no longer engage China as a state. We mock it as an enemy.”
That is not deterrence. That is not diplomacy. That is PROVOCATION!
- Universities are not Psychological-Warfare rooms. The most disturbing part of this is that this is not education. This is indoctrination dressed as civic discourse.
We are no longer teaching students how to think. We are teaching them who to hate and be indoctrinated by it. Is this how we want to mold the minds of our young people? Is this how we define so-called active citizenry and the love for country?
Tarriela publicly humiliated a foreign head of state in front of Filipino youth within the confines of a university. That is not ‘education’ at all. That is recklessness.
So yes, BBM, this is on you. If this is now how Philippine foreign policy is conducted, through mockery, cartoons, and performative hostility, then we are not practicing diplomacy. We are practicing cheap theatrics for Washington’s applause.
And yes, Mr. President, your Coast Guard officer just did something even POTUS Donald Trump dare not do.
If this is the “BBM doctrine,” then we have replaced statecraft with stand-up comedy, and strategy with slideshows of insult. And when Beijing reacts, as any major power would, Marcos Jr. and the whole of his government will again pretend to be shocked.
The SCS dispute is a serious matter. It deserves serious minds. Not PowerPoint propaganda and “kabastusan” masquerading as patriotism.
We can uphold and defend our sovereignty and assert our claims in the SCS without degrading our universities into arenas of psychological warfare and ideological conditioning.
We can defend our SCS claims without turning our campuses and our youth into instruments of state-sponsored propaganda.
A confident nation defends its maritime rights through law, diplomacy, and strategic coherence, not by converting its universities into propaganda theaters. We do not need to militarize our classrooms to protect our seas.
We can stand firm and assert our stance in the SCS without sacrificing our universities to the logic of psychological warfare and political spectacle. The reality is that you don’t win territorial disputes with cartoons or memes.
Strong countries argue their case with law and diplomacy; insecure ones turn their students into propaganda audiences, and that is what just happened.
Senator Imee R. Marcos, as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, what can you say about this?