Quid pro quo
Quid pro quo
The partisans of certain candidates in the old media and their troll cohorts have been serving a regime that has so debased Philippine sovereignty that Filipino fisherfolk have been denied access by a foreign power to their traditional fishing grounds in the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
The same regime has also allowed the unrestricted entry of hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers into the Philippines despite the COVID-19 pandemic, while droves of Filipinos leave the country daily in search of living wages in jobs abroad.
Emboldened by the same regime’s indifference to their brazen incursions into Philippine territorial waters, China’s military sea craft patrol with impunity the West Philippine Sea (WPS) that it has militarized with guided missiles and other advanced weaponry and aircraft to which the whole archipelago is within striking distance.
But it seems that Chinese bullying has been too much even for President Duterte. He earlier declared the Philippines’ “separation” from the United States, but not only is the regime buying millions of dollars’ worth of advanced weaponry from the US, despite Mr. Duterte’s oft-repeated threat to end them, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) still holds joint military exercises with American troops. And Mr. Duterte’s and his military minions’ rhetoric about the “modernization” of the country’s armed forces has not changed the country’s decades-long dependence on the US for its external defense.
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