OP ED | Opinion-Column: Do not vote for a US puppet! VOTE BBM A CHINA PUPPET -Rigoberto Tiglao, The Manila Times

AND obviously, incontrovertibly, it is Leni Robredo who has been and will be the US puppet. For me, this really is by far the most important factor to consider in these elections.

It is scandalous indeed that the Left here — including the Communist Party founder Jose Ma. Sison — which has been the political movement that exposed and opposed US imperialism, is rooting for the American candidate.

 

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It was the country’s most pro-US Foreign Affairs’ secretary Albert del Rosario — who with President Aquino 3rd lost the Scarborough Shoal because they believed the lies of an American diplomat* — who was the main convenor of 1Sambayan that had pushed for and supported Robredo’s candidacy. My sources claim that it is del Rosario with about a dozen of his rich Yellow friends who are Robredo’s biggest funders.

The news website Rappler, Robredo’s propaganda machine which is funded by US CIA-linked entities, has never published a single critical article on the vice president, but has been non-stop in its virulent attacks on the leading presidential contender, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. And so has the main venues for US foreign policy, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

 

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I demolished to a fine sand that Big Lie of the Marcos family’s “P203 billion” unpaid reality taxes. Even the inventor of that Big Lie, retired justice Antonio Carpio has kept shut about his allegation and my rebuttal, probably ashamed that his penchant for lying has been exposed. But still these American broadsheets continue repeating this Big Lie, in order to put down BBM. So much for their claimed adherence to “facts.”

Robredo, after Benigno 3rd stepped down from office in 2016, and del Rosario, have been the biggest spokespersons for the US stance in the South China Sea dispute, even if this has been totally proven to be wrong: for China to follow the 2016 arbitral ruling which nearly all of the world has ignored as unenforceable or plain hogwash.

In her servility to the US, Robredo will reverse President Duterte’s gains in developing our relationship with China — which turned out to be a lifesaver for us as it supplied us the anti-Covid vaccines at a crucial, early period — and resuscitate Aquino 3rd’s belligerent stance toward the emerging superpower.

 

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Hostility

To send the message of her hostility toward China (and confirming to the US her fervent loyalty), Robredo in her six years as vice president had not visited China, making her the only vice president ever to boycott the superpower. On the other hand, she visited the US about nine times, even for a “family vacation” in December 2016, while her home region Bicol was flooded by a powerful typhoon that left thousands needing relief.

We should not forget how Aquino 3rd’s subservience to the US nearly led to our country’s economic catastrophe. As part of the Obama-era “Pivot to Asia” started 2010 — actually the US program to weaken China’ rise in the region — the Americans manipulated Aquino to provoke the Chinese over the disputes in the South China Sea. China retaliated by booting us out of Scarborough Shoal, ironically helped by a US diplomat who lied to Aquino and del Rosario that the Chinese would also be leaving.* Then the US shepherded Aquino to file the arbitration suit ostensibly to order China out of the Spratlys. The superpower retaliated by transforming the reefs it had occupied since 1988 into artificial islands.

China would have slowly cut off its trade with the Philippines, which would have triggered an economic catastrophe for us, since it was our second biggest trading partner, the largest source of imports and the third biggest export market at that time. (The Chinese on the other hand will hardly feel it, as Philippine trade is just 1.3 percent of their total trade.)

 

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine should remind us of the huge costs of being an American puppet. Of course, like the rest of the world, I condemn Putin and Russia for undertaking what is the most despicable invasion of a weaker nation in the post-World War 2 era, the Russian military mercilessly killing thousands of civilians.

 

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Abomination

While nothing can justify that abomination, it happened because after a pro-Russia president was ousted in 2016 (with American agit-prop help, specifically from the National Endowment for Democracy, now Rappler and VERA Files biggest funder), the new president Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to be so much a US puppet he rushed Ukraine’s plans to be a NATO member. Putin felt Russia would soon be encircled by its enemies, and that he had to act. Russia’s neighbor, Finland, for instance had managed since after World War 2 to be neutral — and independent — that it never was threatened by Russia. As Pope Francis said the other day, Russia may have been provoked by the “barking of NATO at its door.”

Obviously though Putin didn’t care how much he destroyed Ukraine and killed thousands of its people.

 

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Russia would be a humbled superpower after its bloody and destructive — but really unsuccessful — invasion of Ukraine ends. The US will merge the sole superpower in Europe, and in its usual hubris, would plot to become the sole hegemon, also in Asia. American imperialism’s innovativeness is boundless in undertaking a scheme to stop China from being a hegemon in Asia. But it needs a proxy for any plot it will undertake, and the Philippines has been the ideal puppet, until Duterte came along.

 

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We’re fortunate though that the Ukraine crisis has occurred at this time, forcing the US to focus its resources and efforts there that we are left alone in these elections.

*See for details my book: Debacle: The Aquino regime’s Scarborough fiasco and the South China Sea arbitration deception. Available Popular and La Solidaridad Bookstores as well as amazon.com.

Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao

Twitter: @bobitiglao

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