US meddling in Phl elections

Talks are rife the United States is meddling in the May 9 general elections. This sort of interference in our sovereign internal affairs is always alarming. But it is in no way surprising. America has always deemed it necessary to create conditions across the globe that are favorable to its interests. This is not the first time the US takes an active, if covert, role in our elections. It will not be the last.

America not only wants every incoming foreign government friendly but also willing to go along with it most of the way. This is particularly true at this time when US-China relations are at its coldest. As small and as poor as it is, the strategic location of the Philippines nevertheless places it at the very heart of the South China Sea, a volatile patch of the western Pacific through which billions in trade pass yearly.

Washington badly needs the Philippines to be on its side, not only in ensuring the unhampered flow of this humongous trade but as a strategic ally in its political conflict with an increasingly assertive China. Hence the coming election is of pivotal interest to the United States. If it is any indication of the intensity of the US focus on our election, at least two US Cabinet officials have been very recent visitors.

With the government of President Rodrigo Duterte, widely viewed as being anti-US, about to leave office in a couple of months and the leading tandem of Bongbong Marcos and Sara Duterte, expected to be no different in much of its foreign policy, all but formally assured of getting voted in as successors, the United States finds itself in a situation where it has to do more to influence the results than it ever did before.

The cost to the US will be more unusually high, the effort particularly more intense. The US has not encountered a situation before where an outgoing Philippine president remains hugely popular and the leading contenders to succeed him are riding on the crest of survey numbers that are already very difficult to catch up with, much less overtake. But trust the US to try mightily to have its favored friendlier candidate win.

But the US is not the US for nothing. It did not become the greatest country in the world just by sitting on its haunches. It moves ahead because it thinks ahead of everybody else. While it will move heaven and earth to prevent the election of BBM and Sara, it is not so foolish as to think of the possibility that BBM and Sara might still win anyway despite its efforts.

And so the US will also provide for such an eventuality. It will not burn its bridges with BBM and Sara, at least not this early. BBM and Sara are just personalities, movable figures in the landscape over which America dominates. If twisting arms will not work, America can always try reason. In the end, it is often people who are open to reason who can get along and move on.

One only has to remember that Bongbong's father was the fair-haired boy of America in these parts because he did a very good job of keeping the communists at bay and ensuring what at the time were America's largest bases overseas secure. If America was able to project its might deep into the Pacific theatre, it was largely due to the Philippines and Marcos.

But when the winds of change swept in, who was there to fly Marcos out but the US itself? The US does not care who gets to sit as president of the Philippines provided he or she can be spun in the direction America wants for its own interests. The US is working to have someone else win on the assumption BBM will be anti-US, following Duterte. But if it can't be helped and BBM wins, it will work on him later.