SABAH ISSUE: Large numbers of Filipinos are to be deported by Malaysia from Sabah, a Borneo territory owned by the Sultan of Sulu, and the Philippines is again walking into a legal trap with eyes wide open.

Everybody I hear commenting on the phased expulsion is engrossed only with the questions of whether Malaysian authorities will treat the prospective deportees properly and if worthwhile livelihoods await them in the Philippines.

It is appalling that not one Filipino official, as of yesterday, has publicly raised questions on the legality or validity of the unilateral Malaysian expulsion of Muslim Filipinos from what is actually their ancestral home.

Sadly, naiveté and commercialism have been the hallmarks of Philippine foreign relations.

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BETRAYAL?: President Gloria Arroyo, the country’s sole spokesman in foreign relations, must speak up and say categorically if she has abandoned the claim to Sabah that her late father, then President Diosdado Macapagal, initiated during his term.

If the claim has not been abandoned, then the Philippine government must speak and act like an active claimant — or lose the case by default. Already, the scoreboard shows Kuala Lumpur outsmarting Manila most of the time.

For the President to remain silent now and allow Malaysia, which is actually just leasing Sabah from a Filipino sultan, to “deport” Filipinos living in that Philippine-claimed territory on Borneo island looks like betrayal of the national interest.

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AMATEURS: Our diplomats, acting/not acting on instructions of Malacanang, are made to look like amateurs compared to their shrewd Malaysian counterparts who have strengthened their case by sly calculated maneuvers.

For instance, to manage the expulsion of Filipinos from Sabah, Kuala Lumpur suggested years ago that Manila establish consular offices in Sabah to attend to the needs of Filipinos being uprooted in droves.

The Philippines, misled by that false  “humanitarian” concern, was on the verge of agreeing until the trap was exposed in media.

Had the Philippines established a consulate in Sabah, that would have been a formal admission that that piece of disputed real estate is foreign territory, that is, not Philippine but possibly Malaysian.

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MEDDLESOME: Still naïve as ever, Manila later on fell for the Malaysian ruse that being Muslim themselves they would help us solve kunwari our rebellion/secession problem with separatist Muslim Filipinos in the South.

In another sign of weakness or naiveté, we allowed Malaysians to poke their partisan finger into our internal affair in various capacities as observers, mediators, etc.

The bringing in of third-party states as participants has given many of our problems an international color. Now any “solution” is deemed valid or acceptable only with the imprimatur of third parties we have allowed to the negotiating table.

Even the so-called “peace process” in the South appears to be ineffectual without the necessary participation of Kuala Lumpur. Bakit ganoon?

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EXTRANEOUS: Presidential son Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo of Pampanga must have been shooting in the dark when he blamed the high global price of crude oil for the precipitous drop in the satisfaction rating of his mother.

Such an extraneous factor could not have been the reason for the negative 27 percent net satisfaction rating of President Arroyo. The price of crude in the world market is beyond the control of any economics professor.

Inured to hard times compounded by inept governance, Filipinos have learned to adapt. Like the bamboo bending with the wind, the masses know how to take harsh reality without breaking.

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INEQUITY: Filipinos are willing to understand the shortcomings of their leaders acting in good faith. What they cannot understand, or forgive, is when people have to suffer while a privileged few are having a grand time.

High prices and low wages are just symptoms of mismanagement at the top.

Okay lang kung talagang mahirap ang buhay, as long as we all share the burden. Basta walang nakalalamang o nanlalamang, o nagpapasasa habang ang karamihan ay naghihirap o nahihirapan.

That, Mikey, is why your mother is getting a negative satisfaction rating. Many citizens bedeviled with problems use surveys to express their resentment of officials who flaunt arrogance of power, abuse their office or abet social inequity.

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ANGELES FOR CHED: President Arroyo need not look far and wide to get the right man to chair the Commission on Higher Education vacated by now Social Security System administrator Romulo Neri.

She can invite again Dr. Emmanuel Y. Angeles, chancellor of the Angeles University Foundation, to chair CHED. We heard the post was first offered to him in 2003, but he politely declined because he was busy with expansion plans for the 56-year-old AUF.

The CHED is a Cabinet-level agency overseeing colleges and universities after the then Department of Education, Culture and Sports was unbundled, with the Department of Education tasked to supervise only elementary and high schools.

Challenged to duplicate, on a national scale, the evidently successful management style he has employed at AUF since he became its second president in 1976, Angeles can be expected to steer CHED to greater heights.

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CANCER UPDATE: Re our Postscript last Tuesday (“Alternative approaches to treating cancer cited”), we knew that Johns Hopkins had disowned the article before. But I still ran it for its informational value, believing in what it reports as validated by many other articles and reports I have read elsewhere.

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