SENATE Minority Leader Franklin Drilon prodded the Duterte administration on Wednesday to stick to “megaphone diplomacy” to match China’s gunboat diplomacy.
Drilon, in a televised interview, said the Philippine government should “continue to exert pressure on China,” putting at the forefront China’s illegal activities in the West Philippines Sea through megaphone diplomacy.
Noting it might be the only recourse left for the Philippines to match China’s “gunboat diplomacy,” the opposition senator said he “would rather that we continue with the megaphone diplomacy because of the gunboat diplomacy of China.”
He made the remarks a day after Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. apologized to his counterpart, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, for his expletive-laden tweet on Monday, telling China to pull out its maritime militia boats once and for all from the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone.
The senator stressed that the Philippine government “must continue to expose these illegal acts of China,” adding that this was “why megaphone diplomacy, as the Chinese foreign minister would call it, is maybe the appropriate course that we have today so that we can keep China on its toes insofar as the world forum is concerned.”
Drilon defended Locsin Jr.’s use of expletives against China on Twitter. “I know Secretary Locsin very well. He is very patriotic. Maybe his emotional outburst is because of the frustration that he cannot do much except file diplomatic protests on this incursion of China,” said Drilon.
In defending the country’s top diplomat, Drilon said Secretary Locsin’s statement, as well as that of Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana “reflects the sentiment of the majority of Filipinos.”
Stressing that “we are all frustrated by what China is doing,” the Senate Minority Leader lamented that China is “not taking the country seriously.”
“Again, the megaphone diplomacy is probably the only weapon that we have today,” said Drilon, adding: “We must keep this in the consciousness not only of the Philippines but of the whole world.”
Drilon described as “quite unfortunate” that there seem to be “different voices” in the government when it comes to the issue of China’s illegal incursions.
“It is quite unfortunate, because you have two members of the Cabinet, Secretary Locsin and Secretary Lorenzana, taking a strong position on this issue. On the other end of the scale, President Duterte who asserts that we must continue our cordial relations with China.”