Insincere Taiwanese leader politicizing poacher’s killing

President Benigno Aquino III has apologized for the Philippine Coast Guard’s killing last week of a Taiwanese fisherman. It was as sincere as can be, given the circumstances. His government was still investigating how exactly the shooting had happened. But even as the coast guards invoked self-defense against a belligerent poaching vessel, it was apparent that they had erred. They supposedly were aiming for the Taiwanese boat’s engine to prevent it from ramming theirs, but in the process hit Hung Shih-cheng, 65. For that, Aquino sent the director of the Taipei-based Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) to convey his and the Filipino people’s apology and condolences to the Hung family and the Taiwanese people. He already was treading on thin diplomatic ice as Beijing, so adamant about a one-China stance, jealously frowns on any official recognition of provincial Taiwan’s sovereignty. Still Aquino followed up with a formal letter, hand-carried by his personal envoy, the MECO chairman in Manila, with the same message.

Yet Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou rejected the contrition as “flippant.” His government recalled its de facto envoy to Manila, severed ongoing trade and cultural activities, and took it out on Filipino guest workers and travel agents. It even called out provocative naval exercises at the sea border.

All this happened as the Taiwanese press, divided between pro- and anti-Beijing, united in editorials calling Aquino insincere. From whatever side they stood, they took Manila’s observance of one-China as excuse for inadequate response. Ma, for months now chastened by a low 14 percent approval rating, saw a chance to rise by riding the wave of outrage. He set off increasingly jingoistic measures, including potential harassment of 87,000 Filipino workers in Taiwan. He had his factotums in Taipei and in Washington accusing the Philippine Coast Guard of “murder.” He ranted that Aquino apologize to him no less.

Sooner or later the Taiwanese will come around to realizing that it’s Ma who’s insincere. He is using fisherman Hung’s death to recoup his tattered look as a fence-sitting centrist. His first demand was recompense for Hung’s heirs. Even if the Philippines wished to comply, that cannot happen unless Ma sets the sober event for it.

But sobriety is farthest from a desperate mind. Ma’s agents worked on hotels where MECO officials usually stayed to deny them billeting this time. He mumbled mere bromides as reports swirled of diners and grocery stores turning away Filipinos in Kaohsiung, the southern port city where Hung resided. No sympathy too when a Filipino worker was pummeled in the head with a baseball bat by neighborhood bullies.

Ma is even cutting off his nose to spite his face. His government has halted processing Filipino work contracts to Taiwan or renewing expiring ones. And yet his man at the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Manila, the counterpart to the MECO in Taipei, had said that the island’s manufactories flourish because of the highly skilled Filipino workers. Acknowledged too was that Filipino domestics boost Taiwan’s economy by freeing its entrepreneurs from housework.

But Ma is unstoppable. He calls for trade sanctions, overlooking that the $11-billion annual commerce between Manila and Taipei favors the latter with a $6.7-billion surplus. He chides the Philippines for its one-China line, forgetting that Manila, at the height of Beijing’s global drive for UN recognition and Taiwan’s expulsion, had thought up the MECO-TECO setup to maintain long-standing ties with the island’s early Kuomintang rulers. Manila had twice earned Beijing’s ire in the ‘90s for feting Taiwanese presidents who dropped by en route to Washington.

Forgotten in Ma’s politicizing of a fisherman’s death is that the incident occurred in Philippine internal waters. Even the Taiwanese map (shown by The STAR yesterday) pinpoints it in the Balintang Channel, between Babuyan Islands of Batanes province and mainland Luzon. The Philippine fisheries bureau’s patrol craft, with 15 coast guards on deck, had spotted a Taiwanese boat and a mother ship poaching marine life. As it approached and gave notice to board, the bigger vessel sped off. The smaller Guang Ta Hsin-28, meanwhile, twice attempted to ram the Philippine craft. Both times the coast guards fired warning shots, then pursued and shot at the boat’s motor as it too fled. That the GTH-28 sustained 59 bullet holes does not mean murder, but self-defense against and hot pursuit of a resisting intruder-rustler.

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Behind last week’s inaugural of the ritzy SM Aura is a bitter fight between the national and the local government. And as always it is the private entity that gets miserably caught in the middle.

The multi-use shopping mall and office condo SM Aura sits on a 3.4-hectare portion of the 40-hectare Taguig Civic Center. In 2006 and 2008 the Bases Conversion and Development Authority had bequeathed the estate to the city, with no restrictions on land use or property zoning. The Taguig city hall promptly auctioned off parcels to private developers. In 2010 SM Prime Holdings Inc. won public biddings to lease two separate lots, on which it built a P3.5-billion, 30-storey complex. The first six floors consist of swanky shops and restaurants, the next 12 of government offices and Filipino businesses, and the last 12 of multinational companies. SM veered away from its usual giant shoebox design to erect an ultramodern artistic structure for high-end businesses.

While SM Aura’s construction was ongoing, the BCDA questioned Taguig City’s commercial development of the area. Supposedly, the latter had breached certain terms on land use for exclusively public purposes. City hall debunked the BCDA claim, pointing out that the land titles and deeds of conveyance contained no such terms or annotations. SM Prime also won a Supreme Court injunction of the BCDA’s plan to retake and rebid Aura’s property for its own grand development.

Unable to argue ownership or authority over the estate, the BCDA turned on SM Prime. It barred the developer from paving old unfinished roads, particularly the McKinley Parkway leading to Forbes Park-Makati and other contiguous commercial and residential zones. SM said it had public safety and convenience in mind in undertaking the roadwork, for which city hall had issued the approvals and permits. BCDA replied that it owns the land on which the roads were being paved. City hall interjected that, under the Local Government Code, it had jurisdiction over all roads, public or private, within its boundaries.

And so SM suffers from yet another conflict between national and local policy.

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