Fallout

This week, the Lahad Datu incident transitioned quickly from being a matter of managing the diplomatic crisis to a matter of managing the domestic political fallout.

Over at the Sabah side, the situation is winding down to its predictable end. The Malaysian police chases after the remnants of a small, poorly armed and suicidal “royal army” that, as accounts now bear out, trickled in rather than entered in force. The Suluk communities are searched thoroughly for hidden arms. Hundreds of undocumented Suluks are jailed and will likely be deported.

There are many reports of abuses committed against the Suluks, including extrajudicial killings. The Malaysian side has not been very cooperative in allowing international observers to look into these reports. Philippine requests for joint human rights monitoring, the entry of a humanitarian mission and access for our navy ships to help withdraw Filipinos, have all been routinely ignored by KL.

Somewhere along the way, in the sloppy manner Manila responded to the crisis, we lost leverage with KL. That is likely commensurate to the loss of respect for our diplomatic acumen.

When the Raja Muda is finally found, that will simply supply the punctuation mark for this eccentric episode.

Down in Tawi-tawi, the beginnings of what could be a massive exodus of Suluks from Sabah is evident. Returning Filipinos, many with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, are coming in by the boatload. As a measure of their despair, two Filipinos were found by Navy patrol craft frantically paddling a small boat across the sea.

Should Malaysian authorities sustain their crackdown on the Suluks, we might see a deluge of boat people that could run into the hundreds of thousands. They crossed over to Sabah in quest of a better life. They will be returning home with nothing.

The Sultan’s own people at Lahad Datu crossed over with resettlement, not invasion, in their minds. Indeed some of them brought arms, but that is part of the usual Tausug garb. They did not want war. There is enough of that where they came from.

In despair over government’s apparent inclination to drop the Sabah claim completely, the Sultan announced the resettlement as some form of reinvigoration of ancient claims. That was when the diplomatic crisis began.

What we see coming from across the sea is more than just voluntary repatriation. This is a wave of refugees, forced out by the heavy handedness with which Suluks are treated by Malaysian authorities. They will soon form a significant constituency of the homeless and the hopeless in our southernmost islands a long way, away from the economic mainstream.

Palace propagandists, apart from peddling their ridiculous conspiracy theory, will try to blame Sultan Kiram for the fresh round of Malaysian crackdown on the Suluks. That will be, to be sure, an easier thought to sell.

Within the frame of mainstream discourse, the Sultan did send his people across political borders, provoking the strong statist response from Kuala Lumpur. The perspective from the Sultanate is different, of course. Himself ridden by disease and poverty, the Sultan can only offer his despairing people the last opiate in the royal armory: the thought that there are greener pastures across the sea that belongs to them by historic right.

That is powerful opiate, no doubt. It once possessed our diplomacy. It is the last tooth on which to mount the emaciated carcass of Filipino nationalism.

Our claim to Sabah, just like Beijing’s claim on the South China Sea reefs, rests entirely on “historic right.” Superfluous as the standing of “historic right” might be in the modern framework of international law, it is still a powerful stimulus for rousing the beast of nationalist passions.

National regimes, especially when they forsake their people’s aspirations for a better life, rely almost exclusively on nationalist passions for legitimation. The regime on Beijing can no longer rely on the failed prophesies of Marxism to legitimize its rule. Over the last few decades, nationalism provided the tried and tested formula for legitimation of the regime and the repressive one-party rule that inhabits it.

In our case, there is understandable reluctance to incite nationalist passions. These passions have proven destructive in the past, pushing us towards economic autarky or towards creating trouble with our neighbors.

In place of nationalism, governments since the Edsa Revolution mustered legitimacy by harping on some sort of repetitive morality play. Each new government paints the previous one as evil and presents itself as the agent of good.

The worn-out morality play as the principal source of legitimacy for government action (or inaction, as the case may be) is barely functional is the case of the Lahad Datu affair — notwithstanding the ridiculous conspiracy theory that summons up all the evils from the past and blames them for the fiasco. The Aquino government is under fire for incompetence in handling our diplomacy and for national betrayal in its apparent abandonment of the Sabah claim. Little wonder the most vociferous condemnation of official behavior in this episode comes from the residual nationalist constituencies.

In a frantic effort to shore up its legitimacy, the administration belatedly attempts to show it does care for the Muslim underclasses. Tawi-tawi is now flooded with sacks of rice and bags of relief goods to welcome the refugees.

The feverish public relations effort recognizes the fallout from this sad episode could be both powerful and complex. Finally, the highest officials of government are talking to the ancient royal houses in the south.