Reversed

To begin with, whatever the merits of his announcement, President Rodrigo Duterte should not have spoken about “separating” from the US while he was in Beijing. That is simply very bad form.

That announcement, covered intensively by the international media, must have made Beijing very uncomfortable. They maintained an inscrutable face. They did not comment on it, much less cheer it. That would have been most unbecoming, most undiplomatic.

It was as if Duterte was taunting a partner of long standing from behind the skirt of another superpower. That is a most cowardly thing to do. That is unpardonably disgraceful behavior.

If we wanted to reconfigure our bilateral relationship with the US, the proper thing to do was to sit down with American counterparts and flesh out the matter. That is what responsible statesmen do. That is what all self-respecting adults do. The US, after all, is a treaty partner. We are more than just friends. We are allies.

To make matters worse, Duterte started dialing down that shocking statement he uttered in Beijing. No, he was not dialing it down. He was completely reversing what he said.

Even more agonizing, he was reversing himself using the most sophomoric, lawyerly hair-splitting. He now tries to distinguish “separation” from “severance” of ties. It is such a pain listening to that explanation.

The damage has been done. Credibility has been scarred. Uncertainty has been unleashed.

As a response to Duterte’s wild and undisciplined pronouncements, the association of BPO companies asked for an urgent audience with the President. Next to the remittances of OFWs, our BPO sector generates the largest foreign exchange for the country. Millions of jobs depend on it.

A high school classmate now living in the US, reports that her husband was due to come to Manila for an American investment project. The investment was cancelled because of the uncertainty Duterte creates. Her husband will no longer make the trip to Manila.

How many more investment projects were cancelled because of the President’s reckless mouth?

If reading up on our foreign relations and brushing up on diplomatic protocol are too tedious for Rodrigo Duterte, I might suggest some light reading – maybe a fairy tale that even Kitty could read to him. The most obvious choice would be The Boy who Cried “Wolf!”

Lately, Duterte has been profuse in his admiration for Vladimir Putin and even had kind words for Donald Trump. At some point he should realize that these men are on the wrong side of history.

Those more sympathetic attribute Duterte’s reckless remarks to the long learning curve of someone ascending from provincial mayor to national leader. But that learning curve must be helped.

Cover-up

Of course we will return the money from the spectacular Bangladesh Bank heist a few months ago. No less that President Rodrigo Duterte made that assurance.

About $101 million was moved out of Bangladesh Bank a few months ago, coursed through the New York Fed towards banks in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. A fifth of that sum was quickly intercepted by banking authorities in Sri Lanka. The rest was moved to the Philippines.

Those monies might have been intercepted if the proper alerts were raised. Instead the officials of Bangladesh Bank kept quiet about the heist for nearly a month. That allowed the transfers to be completed and the money launderers enough time to work. The money was moved out of our banks and transferred to a remittance company and, onwards, to casino financiers.

The diligent response of our banking and monetary authorities led to the recovery of about $15 million of the loot. That amount was surrendered to the Bangko Sentral literally in cash. The rest of the loot was filtered away.

More cash might have been recovered if Bangladesh Bank reported more promptly. But they did not, presumably because some of the high and mighty in Dhaka must have thought this mess might be kept under the lid. On the first days after the heist, the cover-up began possibly to save the insiders implicated in this grand theft.

The Economist reports that for the second time, the Bangladesh government prevented the release of the report of a panel tasked to investigate the matter. Former central bank governor Mohammed Farashuddin chaired that panel.

Suppressing the report for the second time, the Bangladesh government is using the Philippines as excuse. Disclosure of the report, they say, might compromise recovery of the money already in the hands of the Bangko Sentral. That is a lot of bull. Philippine authorities have already committed to return the recovered money without condition.

We are being used as an excuse to suppress a report that, very likely, implicates some high banking officials in Dhaka. Perhaps the bulk of the stolen money might have circled around and ended up in their pockets. One insider in Dhaka, interviewed by The Economist says the report might never be released.

Our monetary officials might have been a little too eager to return money we recovered without condition. We should have, in the name of transparency, made the release of the report as a condition for returning the money to a corrupt government. This is for the sake of the people of Bangladesh who are robbed each day by some of those who govern in their name.

But then, when we agreed to return money we recovered, we did not expect such brazen effort by the Bangladesh government to suppress what must be an explosive report.