A quisling in uniform?

 

Photo credit: SVD

"A quisling in uniform" was also published by The Manila Times on 18 September 2024.

Lawyer Wilfredo Garrido rants against General Romeo Brawner, Jr., Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), for allowing "his troops to starve to the point of death when help is available from comrades and allies…"

Garrido was commenting on a media report saying that living on "lugaw" (rice porridge) for weeks forced the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) crew of BRP Teresa Magbanua to depart from Escoda (Sabina) Shoal, where the vessel had previously been anchored for five months (since April 2024), for Palawan.

His social media post on 16 September 2024 (copied verbatim below) reads:

THIS IS ON YOU, GENERAL BRAWNER!

If only you accepted US help to escort Philippine ships, Teresa Magbanua wouldn't have felt alone and abandoned. It wouldn't have been forced to set sail home.

However, you callously proclaimed that help will be forthcoming only "when our troops are already hungry, they don’t have any supplies anymore because our resupply mission have been blocked and they are on the verge of dying".

The effect on morale was devastating, not only on the Navy but on the civilian Coast Guard which has command over Teresa Magbanua. The latter cannot fight the Chinese alone - not with a Navy under express orders not to fight back.

What kind of commander, sitting in the comfort of headquarters, will allow his troops to starve to the point of death when help is available from comrades and allies? Only General Romeo Brawler.

Under these circumstances, the crew were forced to subsist on porridge and rainwater for weeks. With no relief coming except body bags, they set sail for home. They didn't have to obey orders to starve to the point of death. That is illegal, cowardly, against the Articles of War.

We lost Escoda Shoal. Not because of the Chinese. With Brawner as friend who needs enemies."

Escoda Shoal has practically been a combat zone these past several months. Efforts by the Philippine government to feed the Teresa Magbanua crew and replenish essential supplies for their use have been regularly met with often violent response coming from China’s naval forces. Chinese Coast Guard vessels have been deliberately goring Philippine vessels with regularity. At other times Chinese forces have shamed the Philippine flag and Filipino crews with water cannons. Wielding axes and armed with knives and spears, they have forcibly boarded Philippine vessels, puncturing inflatable boats, confiscating Philippine properties, and on one occasion causing a Filipino’s finger cut off.

In 1999, the Philippine government maneuvered the rusting BRP Sierra Madre to run aground at the nearby Ayungin Shoal (Second Thomas Shoal) which then served as a stationary military deployment. A commentary at the Xinhua state news agency charged that the Philippines was trying to replicate Sierra Madre with Teresa Magbanua, warning that "China will never be deceived by the Philippines again."

Aside from violent and aggressive actions directed by China forces at their Philippine counterparts, Magbanua has also attracted the deployment of up to 250 Chinese militias and warships around the area at any given time. For how long the Philippine troops will be able to hold their ground is a question that only the government can competently answer. 

Did the AFP deliberately starve its troops, to the point of emaciating them to death, so it would have the pretext to exit Escoda Shoal without losing face?

With Magbanua out of the way, it would be harder now to conduct re-supply missions for Sierra Madre. Escoda Shoal is located 75 nautical miles from Palawan (630 nautical miles from China), while the Ayungin Shoal is located farther to the west (105 nautical miles from Palawan).

After Bajo De Masinloc (120 nautical miles west of Luzon and about 469 nautical miles from mainland China), are we seeing the last of Escoda, and eventually Ayungin Shoal, as part of Philippine-controlled territory?

Bajo De Masinloc (also called Panatag and/or Scarborough Shoal) where earlier this month Chinese planes shot flares at the path of a Philippine Air Force plane flying over it on a routine maritime patrol, was the same site when, in 2012, a Escoda Shoal-like standoff happened between the Philippine and Chinese governments. We lost the stare down challenge there and left with tails between our legs. Although we continue to assert sovereignty over the shoal as part of our exclusive economic zone (EEZ), China has since then taken control—and exercised possession—of it.

The Philippines took China, which claims territorial jurisdiction over practically the entire South China Sea, to court to establish sovereign rights over its EEZ, in accordance with international law, within the West Philippine Sea. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines, rejecting China’s claims; the latter, however, recognized neither the court’s proceedings nor its ruling.

With a new mandate as president of the country, Mr. Rodrigo Duterte did not press China to respect the PCA ruling. Instead, he profusely expressed his love for China and its leader, Xi Jinping, even to the point of thrash talking his own country’s Constitution (which tasks the government to protect the country’s territorial integrity at all costs, or, figuratively at least, over the president’s dead body) in the defense of a position that rationalizes losing parts of the territory if that is what it would take to avert a shooting war that could not be won.   

Duterte, of course, had shifted his weight depending on which half of his butt was sitting.

In a 2020 speech at the United Nations General Assembly, he said that the 2016 ruling was “beyond compromise” and, for emphasis, added that “we firmly reject attempts to undermine it.” A couple of months before that, he said in a State of the Nation address that he could not afford a war with China over conflicting claims in the WPS. He explained that "China has the arms—we do not have it. So, it's simple as that. They are in possession of a property.... So what can we do? We have to go to war, and I cannot afford it. Maybe some other president can, but I cannot."

Yet again in a nationally televised address, he deemed the Hague ruling as rubbish, despising it as nothing more than a piece of paper that he could easily dump in a waste basket.

And just weeks before his term ended in 2022, he said in a ceremony for the commissioning of BRP Melchora Aquino that “we cannot afford fighting with China. We cannot win and we will lose, and the population will suffer.”

Like his predecessor, the incumbent president has been pretending to be tough in the defense of the country’s territorial integrity. But the pretensions are easy to see. Unlike China that puts its military might where its mouth is—supporting its claims in the disputed waters by swatting away intruders and building new islands—his government could not even show support to those who are performing patriotic duties at the front lines, leaving the Teresa Magbanua crews to fend for themselves even to the point of seeing them dying from hunger.  

Most of our leaders have prudently cited the ominous suffering our people will have to go through in case a violent war erupts against any foreign power. That makes them sound authentic, ever on the lookout for the wellbeing of their people. It is also a convenient cope out; they do not lose face while risking nothing. What is not verbalized in equally graphic statements are the wealth and political power that they risk losing in case of a disruptive war.

Government officials, through their public pronouncements, assure us that we will keep Escoda despite the retreat of Magbanua.

The problem is that we have no shortage of quislings in government, as can be seen from how dismissed Bamban, Tarlac mayor Gou Huaping (alias Alice Guo) and those who created her have thrived. (The word “quisling” originated from Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Quisling, who helped the Nazi invasion of his country during World War II.)

A quisling badge would normally apply to politicians, but with Garrido’s depiction of Brawner, I struggle not to see shades of it blighting the honor of our men and women in uniform.