Ignoble

When Alfred Bernhard Nobel established the Nobel Prizes through his will written a year before his death on December 10, 1896, they had been intended to be awarded to persons who had been adjudged to “have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”

Among those awards, one which is the most prized, is that for Peace.

Despite public denials and subdued protestations of acquiescing to China’s will, the Aquino Administration did itself, and the whole nation, a great disservice by snubbing the awarding ceremonies which we had constantly and consistently attended until this year. We have been bullied into not attending the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to detained Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Brandishing the justification of realpolitik, the government defended itself from the “hypothetical” snub which it nonetheless continues to deny. The long and short of it, however, is that the Aquino government did not want to antagonize China after the Mendoza hostage incident in which Chinese nationals tragically lost their lives. In choosing this path of obsequiousness, the Aquino Administration may have doomed itself from ever rising from this position of subservience to China.

It may be objected that our presence (or in this case, our absence) from Oslo where the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo was awarded is not that significant to our real and practical commitment to upholding human rights; nor to the recipient and the award itself. That may be true.

But the question here is one about the assertion of our independence from a foreign power which, together with the United States, has bullied other nations into towing the line it draws. The Aquino government chose to kowtow to China with the hopes of averting any aggravation of the “strain” in their relationship. What it effectively did was instigate further China’s diminished respect of the Philippine government by demonstrating to the whole world that the Philippines can and will put its principles aside when it is threatened. Or when it is bullied.

This is ignoble.