WHEN officials of the Duterte administration and political supporters both inside and outside Congress warned people not to spread fake news regarding the 2019 novel coronavirus acute respiratory disease (2019-nCoV ARD), some people advised them to fact-check first what President Rodrigo Duterte said in his press conference held late Monday, February 3.

However, it is hard to use the words spoken by the President as the basis for fact-checking. It’s either he is joking, or one cannot divine a ready meaning due to his unique, rambling manner of speaking. Either he is not serious, or that there is no certainty in what he is actually saying. It would be terribly difficult to fact-check a joke, and it is definitely a challenge to fact-check something that is not coherent.





What is however easy to fact-check is the conspiracy theory video shown by Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd at the Senate hearing last Tuesday, February 4, that alleged that the 2019-nCoV outbreak is nothing but biological warfare. If one could be chastised for sharing wild theories about the virus in social media, then Sotto, and Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go, who chaired the hearing, should both be reprimanded by the Presidential Communications Operations Office for being directly responsible in allowing an obvious falsehood to be posted not on social media but entered into the official record of the proceedings of the Senate.

If there is something that can easily be fact-checked among the claims made by the President during his press conference, it would be the patent falsehood he uttered that China has been nothing but kind to us. This is factually incorrect.

It is not an act of kindness for China to claim as part of its territory not only a large swath of our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the West Philippine Sea, but also part of our national territory. It is not also an act of kindness to harass and prevent our fishermen from fishing within our EEZ over which they have sovereign rights as Filipino citizens. It is definitely not an act of kindness to send navy ships, coast guard and armed naval militias to block Filipino fishermen from earning their livelihood. One cannot claim that ramming a stationary fishing boat and leaving its 22 crewmembers to drown in open sea is an act of kindness. Worse, it is not an act of kindness to turn the tables around and accuse the Filipino crew of making the first aggressive move and that the Chinese vessel was simply trying to escape them, and in the process accidentally hit the Filipino fishing vessel.

But of course, the President and his supporters can always point to the money that China has poured into his infrastructure programs. But these are mostly loans that we have to pay back with interest, which is even much higher when compared to the rates given by Japan, and whose repayment periods are much shorter than what the latter provides. It is certainly not an act of kindness when a bank or a lender gives a loan to a borrower. It is all purely a business transaction. Certainly, it is not an act of kindness when a 5/6 lender holds the ATM card of a borrower and imposes onerously unreasonable and unjust rates. It is not kindness. In fact, it is a crime. It is called usury.

China may have acted with some kindness when in giving us grants and financial assistance, which are not to be repaid. But often, these are humanitarian and not development grants, and not in the same magnitude provided by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union, and even Japan and other countries.

No. China’s relationship with us is not about kindness, but about its interests being served on a silver platter by our leaders who make us believe that it is in our best interest to just roll over. The equation of the relationship was even clearly articulated by the President himself. He has made it appear that he has no choice but to own China’s interests as also ours simply because the alternative is war. He has repeatedly painted for us the specter of being helpless against China’s might, that we have to befriend it in order for the Republic to survive. The President and his political lieutenants argue that it is not President Duterte’s fault. He was supposedly dealt a bad hand by his predecessor and was abandoned by the US. He has painted himself as totally helpless in the face of China’s might. To those who criticize his submission to China, he and his loyal defenders raise the war bogey as scare tactic.

This is precisely why the President and his supporters defend China, even if it is not trusted by most Filipinos. The President dismissed the boat-ramming incident as a simple accident. Amid the threat of the 2019-nCoV, the government appeared to be initially more concerned about China’s feelings than protecting the health and safety of our own people. And in the face of the accusations that China withheld vital information about the disease, an allegation that even Chinese citizens make against their own government, our Foreign Affairs Secretary boldly defended China.

The President pleaded that we should reciprocate what he interprets as the kindness of China. And that is exactly what he and his government have been doing the whole time, almost to the point of being unkind to his own people. The initial reaction of the Duterte government to the 2019-nCoV outbreak has made that perfectly certain: China, above anything else.

What is uncertain is how politically and economically costly would the 2019-nCoV outbreak be to China, and what would be the repercussions of this to the President and his legacy of kindness towards it. And more uncertain is until when the kindness of the Filipinos toward those who have been unkind to them will last.