The ‘Bone of Contention’

BY THIS time, it would be more than a month since the public spat between Philippine Coastguard Commodore and Spokesperson ‘For the West Philippine Sea’ Jay Tarriela and the Chinese Embassy started trending on social media.

The issue could have died there and then IF ONLY Tarriela is man enough to apologize for making a caricature of Chinese President Xi Jinping during his latest anti-China tirade, dressed up as “academic presentation,” before students of De Lasalle University last January 14.

We are among those who repeatedly noted that Tarriela’s insult of President Xi is not something even those in the opposition would want to be done by Chinese officials to President Marcos Jr.

And under the circumstances, the “best” recourse is to simply apologize, if only to show that Tarriela, as a uniformed government factotum, is also an “officer and a gentleman.”

This—Tarriela’s insulting the Chinese President—is the bone of contention between him and the Chinese Embassy, nothing more, nothing less.

But as subsequent events would show, everyone is wrong in assuming that Tarriela is an officer and a gentleman. He is not.

He is just plain arrogant whose every action and words, no matter how stupid or outrageous—for as long as they are anti-China– is being condoned by even PBBM, the Chief Architect of our foreign policy, in the absence of any disciplinary action against him until now.

This “original sin” of course, has been swept under the rug when US puppets in our Senate rushed out to protect Tarriela by calling his insult of the Chinese leader as “performance of official duty” and shifting the blame to the Chinese Embassy by branding its officials as “ungrateful guests’ for vigorously protesting Tarriela’s abusive behavior.

But then, there is a “bigger bone of contention” that is of more interest to Filipinos—who are really behind the trillion pesos theft of our national budgets these past three years? And why is it that only the “small fries” are in the dock for corruption while the suspected masterminds remain scot-free?

Aside from protecting Tarriela at any cost, which we suspect to be Washington’s marching order to its other subalterns here, the related issues it spawned– our maritime dispute with China– have stolen our focus away from the flood control project scam.

Was this really the intention of those working behind the scene? To divert our anger and frustration to something else?