Missionary

Until Malacañang began fighting with Sister Patricia Fox, few people had heard of the Australian nun. Now that the missionary is being expelled from the Philippines for non-missionary activities, the whole world has become aware of her existence – and her cause.

Her forthcoming expulsion from the Philippines has become a much more powerful amplifier of her stand on the human rights situation in this country than any protest rally can ever achieve.

It’s still a free country and there are protest actions against a wide range of issues almost every week in Metro Manila alone. Some groups actually provoke violent police dispersal to attract media attention and draw funding from sympathizers.

But how often do you see a 71-year-old nun, who has been conducting missionary work for over two decades in the Philippines, being led off to detention and then being deported to her home country because she joined rallies?

Governments in states that were once under colonial rule can be particularly touchy about being criticized or told how to run the country by foreigners. President Duterte has a point when he asks why “Sister Pat” doesn’t speak out against the treatment of international asylum seekers by her own government.

Still, someone should advise the President about the art of picking enemies. In terms of physical appearance alone, the government is already a loser: that’s a skinny, frail-looking septuagenarian woman, with the gentle demeanor typical of nuns, who’s being kicked out of the country for saying nothing that we haven’t heard from many other critics of the human rights situation in the Philippines.

Human rights advocates should thank the government for the publicity bonanza.

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Sister Pat is being expelled ostensibly for non-missionary activities, in violation of her missionary visa. But what exactly are missionary activities? The past decades have seen Christian missionaries helping people suffering not only from poverty but also from social and political oppression. In Latin America, they call it liberation theology.

The government could have quietly given Sister Pat a warning. There’s no certainty that she would have heeded it, but she seems to be a reasonable person. In exchange for continuing her 27 years of missionary work in this country that needs a lot of help, she might be open to gentle persuasion about staying away from public protests. She can always help bring comfort to victims of police abuses, as long as she stays out of the spotlight.

But now that the government itself has thrust her into that spotlight, her concerns have been loudly amplified.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque, in a different life a champion of human rights, now defends the move of the administration he serves. In Roque’s other role as presidential adviser on human rights, would he have suggested a different approach to the case of Sister Pat?

The barring of a Western European socialist politician from entering the Philippines for a conference hardly raised an eyebrow in this country where Duterte continues to enjoy high (although slipping) approval ratings.

But despite Duterte’s continuing rants against the Catholic Church, it’s still a predominantly Catholic country, and that’s an aging nun he has taken on, complete with his trademark expletives.

Duterte probably just wants to hammer home the message that he won’t take criticism from foreigners. Many foreign diplomats have learned the virtue of prudence in their public pronouncements in this administration.

But the barring of the European politician should have served as sufficient warning to foreign human rights champions about the risks of bringing their advocacies to this country.

Picking up a nun from her Quezon City convent and then detaining her for a day smacks of paranoia.

Duterte said his order was merely to have Fox investigated. So what did the Bureau of Immigration think it was doing? The overzealous BI official who misunderstood the presidential order should face sanctions, for failing to glue his brain to his head.

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The Philippines is not the only country that expels foreigners for anti-government activities. Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries do this routinely. The Philippine president has the prerogative to bar or expel undesirable aliens.

But the Philippines is not Singapore, and has stood out in this region as a champion of civil liberties and Christian values. Our law enforcers have a long-standing policy of “maximum tolerance” in dealing with political protests. All of these things are being upended in the Duterte administration. Do Filipinos want this trend to become irreversible?

Duterte can’t be selective in invoking sovereignty when dealing with foreigners – loving the guy who rejects UN-recognized Philippine sovereign rights in disputed waters while squishing like a cockroach a nun who dared join protest rallies. It reinforces criticism that Duterte is tough only on the helpless who can’t fight back.

In picking presidents, Filipinos tend to choose the antithesis of the incumbent. Duterte represented many things that Noynoy Aquino was not, and won by a landslide. At the end of six years, will Filipinos be tired of the intemperate ways of Dirty Rody, and pick a kinder, gentler, more civil replacement?

Public impatience usually sets in midway through a six-year presidency. In the latest Social Weather Stations survey for the first quarter of the year, Duterte’s net trust rating plummeted by 10 points from December 2017. That’s a steep fall in just three months. And while a net 65 percent is still a comfortable rating, it’s creeping ever closer to 50 – a halfway mark indicating public ambivalence and greater tendency to feel discontent toward the president.

If Duterte wants his successor to be someone of his own choosing, with continuity as the battle cry, he may have to consider tempering his ways. Perhaps he can take some lessons from the fate that befell his favorite president, Ferdinand Marcos.

One: choose your enemies.

Two: avoid creating martyrs.