OP-ED EDITORIAL: OPINION – ‘Threat to sovereignty’ – Thursday, April 26, 2018

A 71-year-old Australian nun, who has lived in the Philippines since 1990, is being sent back to her land for being an undesirable alien.

She was held briefly by the Bureau of Immigration last week, and for a while it seemed an apology was coming. Soon, however, no less than President Rodrigo Duterte said it was he who had ordered Sister Patricia Fox investigated for disorderly conduct and engaging in partisan political activity outside her missionary work.

“You insult me under the cloak of being a Catholic [religious], and you are a foreigner! Who are you? It is a violation of sovereignty,” Duterte said last week.

Fox has 30 days to leave the Philippines, a country whose farmers she helped by introducing organic farming and by informing them of their rights.

The nun says she still hopes she can explain to the government and that it would consider its decision. It appears, however, that President Duterte’s resolute mind will remain just that.

As leader of the land, Mr. Duterte is well within his rights to take action against those whom he perceives to violate our sovereignty. Nobody questions that this is part of his prerogative as chief executive, even as we vehemently disagree with how exactly he carries out this role. While we do not agree that a septuagenarian nun who has done so much good for the poor poses any risk at all to the country, we agree with the President that he can—no, he must—call out anybody he believes tramples on our sovereignty.

Which leads us to our mighty neighbor, China.

We cannot understand how the same person can order the deportation of a foreign nun for “disorderly conduct” while being permissive of a foreign country’s blatant incursions into our sovereignty.

Mr. Duterte’s amorous relations with the Chinese appears to cloud his objective determination of what constitutes such violations. Why has he kept notoriously silent about the many times Beijing has undermined our sovereignty? It has asserted its claims by building structures on disputed territory. It has even dared conduct research even on the Philippine Rise, which is on the other side of Luzon island altogether.

The President’s alter egos have insisted on China’s good faith. It is so easy to believe  this is because of the many favors promised us in terms of loans, grants and investments, even as we hope we are wrong.

We have hardly seen reason and compassion in the past few days. At the very least, we hope to see some consistency./ posted April 26, 2018 at 12:50 am by Manila Standard