Hat trick by Alex Magno

From Philstar.

Excuse the football terminology: “hat trick” is the best I can describe Beijing’s edgewise diplomacy which pulls out a mutually satisfying outcome from an impossibly annoying situation.

China, as is known, has a 4,000-year experience in statecraft. The wisdom shows in this recent complication over the execution of three Filipino drug mules originally scheduled for this week.

The complication is entirely the Philippines’ own making. Although we were officially informed in September the executions will happen after due review by China’s supreme court, we still chose to make a grand spectacle about our official pleading for commutation of the sentences. President Aquino then committed two blunders in quick sequence: he admitted to boycotting the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and then linked this to the effort to save the lives of the drug mules.

Manila was to be sure, playing to the domestic audience, fearful of a repeat of the turbulence that followed Flor Contemplacion’s execution in 1995. But it was doing so at China’s expense. If the plea for commutation was rejected outright, China will appear hard of heart. If it was granted, China will appear like she had dangled lives in exchange for a boycott of the Oslo ceremonies. If a pardon was granted, the credibility of China’s tough anti-drug laws will be shattered.

All the clanging of diplomatic pans from Manila must have annoyed China’s leaders immensely. President Aquino was trying to call Hu Jintao about it. He dispatched Vice-President Binay to Beijing without — again — waiting for Chinese clearance for the visit. He called the whole nation to prayer, as if the drug mules were saints about to face martyrdom.

If the Chinese leaders were annoyed by Manila’s strange behavior, they did not show it. Hu quietly avoided President Aquino II’s phone calls and the public might not have known about the snub had Aquino not talked about it himself. After initially rejecting the Binay delegation, they quickly reversed and accepted the vice-president — most likely after discovering a mutually satisfying solution to the complication.

That mutually satisfying solution lay in postponing the executions.

Full article here.