Government needs a dictionary, and something more

ONE of the strange reasons for deporting Australian missionary nun Sr. Patricia Fox, was that this is defining government’s independent foreign policy.

This comes from Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano, who said foreigners should have no business telling us how to run the country. Especially about human rights.

This independent foreign policy ‘thingy’ came up two years ago when the President said it is time to break up ties with the US in the name of this independence. But there is really a strange definition of it lately.

It seems the government’s Independent foreign policy is to send a missionary home for serving the poor for 27 years, and her only “crime” is to ask what is the government not doing to help the poor.

Its independent foreign policy however is also to remain mum about China’s buildup of foreign military installations in the West Philippine Sea.

There is no president riding a jet ski to plant a flag. There are no soldiers or police patrolling the islands as they are deployed in Boracay or in Mindanao protecting algae (in the former) or clearing communities for the entry of mining and plantation investments.

It is “interventionist” that Sr. Pat talks about helping the farmers in Luistia or Marbai gain access to their land. But last December, the President invited American action star Steven Seagal to meet soldiers in Sulu, and inspire them about “fighting the evil”, never mind what evil Seagal is talking about. There is a paradox that journalist Inday Espina-Varona points out in her recent column in all this.

The immigration department finds Sr. Pat undesirable for her human rights advocacy. But at the same time the government broke protocol by rescuing distressed OFWs in Kuwait in the name of human rights.

While Foreign Affairs Secretary Cayetano asserts the human rights of the OFWs, the government is failing the farmers and Lumads here whom Sr. Pat and other advocates have been protecting.

There is no question we need to help the OFWs, but consistency and equality is also needed in helping many sectors. And not to make such “rescue” a propaganda stunt. Or else, they suffer like those politicos who fell under the weight of their hype on a weak bridge.

The government and its propaganda machine also must look at themselves. How can they cheer for protecting OFWs but jeer at people who want to defend Lumads, farmers, workers and the poor?

The government needs to define independent foreign policy not on its own terms, not on its own ways of bullying advocates, yet remain blind and subservient to multinationals who plunder our resources and dump their guns, cash, trash and policies into our country. Independence doesn’t start with talking and bullying. It starts with empowering our own people and our own destiny.