SLOW DEATH: At the rate we allow legitimate territorial claims to slip away through our negligence or lack of political will, more aggressive neighbors are likely to end up gobbling them up little by little, together with their rich oil deposits.

This is ironic, because we are supposed to have the most cunning land-grabbers and squatters-becoming-owners on the face of the earth.

The Department of Energy has just suspended the P75-million 2D seismic acquisition and processing of data from the Reed Bank in the vicinity of Kalayaan Islands near Palawan while the Department of Foreign Affairs “studies” the matter.

Explaining the referral to the DFA, Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras pointed out that some neighboring countries were claiming the same area.

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TIMIDITY: The suspension betrays timidity, coming as it does after Chinese jet fighters buzzed Philippine patrol planes in the area and, earlier, a Chinese warship maneuvered belligerently close to a Philippine vessel doing scientific research among the reefs.

Asked what it would do, the government said it was still verifying those incidents reported in media. (Maybe they were merely concocted by naughty columnists?) That was many days ago. Cannot President Noynoy Aquino lift the phone and ask?

The DoE’s tossing the matter to the foreign office after China’s show of force is a sure way of consigning the claim to a “Mona Lisa” fate – “they just lie there and they die there.”

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A PATTERN: Stopping the survey does not necessarily mean the dropping of our claim on Reed Bank areas, but it impacts negatively on the firmness of our position and emboldens other nation-claimants entering the picture.

This timidity (nobody is yet calling it cowardice) seems to be part of a behavioral pattern of a weak government or a spineless leadership.

Despite its long-established presence in the Reed Bank and Kalayaan, the Philippines softened up and agreed in 2005 with China to a Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking to look for oil deposits.

Learning of it, Vietnam also demanded that it be included. And, running true to form, the Philippines readily acquiesced.

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CLOMA CLAIM: Way back in 1947, a Filipino adventurer and fishing magnate by the name of Tomas Cloma discovered the uninhabited islands in the Luzon Sea west of the southern tip of Palawan. With his brother Filemon, he claimed the group and named it Freedomland.

Now renamed Kalayaan, the thriving municipality of some 225 Filipinos hold regular elections with the rest of the country. I remember a certain Gil Policarpio was elected mayor in the 1990s. The website of the town identifies the incumbent mayor as Rosendo L. Mantes.

Pagasa, the biggest (37.2 hectares) island, may not have a Mercury Drug, a Starbucks or a Jollibee outlet, but it boasts of a 1.3-kilometer airstrip, a water-filtering plant, power generators, weather stations and a communication tower built by Smart Telecoms.

Allowing the surrounding islets – including 18.6-hectare Likas, a haven of giant turtles — to be taken over by Chinese (Vietnamese have started to register their presence also) will jeopardize the viability of the Filipino community of mostly fishermen.

By our timidity, we stand to lose our possession, little by little, islet by islet. That could mean goodbye to those rich oil deposits lying within our economic zone.

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LAUGHING STOCK: In the negotiations with Moro secessionists in their home court in Kuala Lumpur and communist revolutionaries in luxurious exile in the Netherlands, the same soft timid approach is slowly eroding our case against adventurers mocking the Republic.

The secessionist Moro band, packaged as a “liberation front” to gain support in the Arab world, has succeeded in internationalizing what is actually a domestic conflict.

Suddenly a bunch of rebels whom we have unwittingly granted a status of belligerency (too late to take it back?) is sitting across the table as equals of the Republic of the Philippines.

Because of our timidity, our lack of political will and communication skills, we are fighting a losing battle at the negotiation table. Aside from simply facing rebels, we now have to contend with foreign observers, alien (Malaysian) moderators, and other meddlers who are suddenly part of the equation.

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BARBER TALK: Our problems must have reached serious proportions that even my barber has been agitated and volunteering solutions. With him waving the razor as he talked (in Tagalog with a Bisaya accent), I had no choice but to listen, or pretend to.

He must have read one of my columns, because he was repeating what I said once, that PR (public relations) is two things – doing something right and talking about it. Assuming that PNoy has been doing something right, he asked, how come we do not notice or feel it?

He said that if he were the President, he would fire his miscommunicators or revamp the multi-headed group. He observed that when there is failure to communicate, PNoy cannot pinpoint responsibility. Is the fault that of the Cabinet Secretary writing the message, or the other Secretary disseminating it?

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NEWS VS VIEWS: If there is only one Press Secretary in charge of everything, he said, the President can always bawl out only one person. At present, he noted, PNoy would not be able to pin his finger on anyone.

That might be the reason why, unable to find a scapegoat, the President conveniently blames columnists, adding that he has no problem with the Malacañang press corps reporting Palace news.

It seems nobody has mustered enough courage to tell the President the big difference between news and views, and that columns are, by definition, opinion pieces and could be too opinionated for comfort.