 Welcome to Law Across the Sea. My name is Mark Shklav, and I am the host of Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea features lawyers who travel across the sea, tuned from Hawaii. And we discuss what these lawyers have found, what they've seen, what they've taken with them and brought back with them on their travels. And today, the title of our program is Philippines Crossword Puzzle. And our guest is Lance Collins. There have been some crosswords lately between the Philippines and the United States. And the current and future relationships between these two countries is puzzling. Lance is a Hawaii attorney who has a deep and personal interest and perspective in Philippine history and culture. He is the executive director of the Hawaii Institute for Philippine Studies and as a trustee for the International Philippine Studies Association based in Quezon City. Welcome, Lance. Good to see you. Aloha. Good morning. Good to see you, too. Lance, first, tell me a little bit about your background with the Philippines and how you got involved with the Philippines and what your interest is. Well, my mother is a Filipina from the Philippines. I was raised on Maui. And I have a, I did go to law school. I'm a licensed attorney, but I also have a PhD from the University of Hawaii. And the emphasis was Philippine Studies. So I've sort of had a lifelong interest in Philippine culture and history. I sit on the International Philippine Studies Association Board of Trustees. I have for several years now. And with respect to the current government in the Philippines, I have family members who are part of the government. In fact, one who's a lawyer. And I also have family members who are part of the opposition and, of course, a number of family members who are not in any way involved in the government in the Philippines. And I frequently go to the Philippines both to conduct research and occasionally to see my family try to be able to do both on each trip, although it doesn't always work out successfully that way. So you have a family interest and connection and also an intellectual or scholastic, which probably comes from the family background. Yeah, well, you know, my mother's family comes from Batangas and Maspate. And there are not a lot of Batenganios or Maspatenios in the Philippines, I mean, in Hawaii. So it's sort of growing up. I just didn't. It's like, OK, we're not Ilocano. I don't really understand. Yeah, we don't fit into what everybody else is doing. So I don't quite understand. But my in-laws are Ilocano, also from Maui. But over the years now, I have a much broader understanding of all of that than I did at growing up, which is just all very confusing. So you're still searching. Lifelong search, yeah, yeah. OK, well, look, I'm puzzled. OK, what is going on in the Philippines? What is going on? I've been to the Philippines many times. Lots of good friends there. Lots of attorney friends in Manila. And frankly, that's the friendliest place I could hope to go. But the recent things that have been going on, the crosswords, if you will, from the president of the Philippines to me are puzzling. And I want to find out what it's all about. Well, I think first you have to understand, who is the president and how did he become president? So who is the president? Well, he's an attorney, believe it or not. And he was sort of a nobody during the Marcos dictatorship. And he sort of sprung into the leadership in Davao, which is a city in the South, after Marcos fled and Aquino had 17-month revolutionary dictatorship or whatever you call it. And then from there, he essentially established a dynasty in Davao. So he's this longtime mayor of Davao City. And his sort of mentality is the big man in a small town. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Cheng, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m., where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in, and aloha, and thanks for watching. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory, and I host Kondo Insider. We talk about issues facing the Kondo Association throughout Hawaii and talk about solutions. When you think about it, about one-third of our population lives in some form of common interest real state. We broadcast every Thursday at 3 p.m. Please tune in, and thank you. Aloha. Aloha, and happy New Year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at 1 o'clock. Mahalo. Aloha. My name is John Wahee. And I used to be a part of all the things that you might be angry at. I served in government here, and may have made decisions that affects you. So I want to invite you in. I want to invite you in to Talk Story with me and some very special guests every other Monday here at Talk Story with John Wahee. Come on in, join us, express your opinion, learn more about your state, and then do something about it. Aloha. All right, we must apologize because we had a brief technical outage here at Think Tech. But it wasn't due to President Duterte. We hope. We hope. I don't think he yet knows about this. But we were talking about him. And we were talking about how he came to power. And I'd kind of like Lance to you to start over and tell us a little bit about how he came to be the President of the Philippines. OK, so he, for many years, was the mayor of Davao City. And Davao City in the South is a very poor area of the Philippines. But Davao City is not quite so poor. And that's because it's had this 100-year history of American and then Japanese investment. So he's the President. I mean, he's the mayor of Davao City and sort of has this reputation of a dirty, hairy kind of guy. You know, he goes around. Well, he has death squads and crownly criticized by human rights, international human rights organizations. Even at that time, one and a half years. But there's sort of this other part to it, which was like, other people felt, oh, well, that was good because he kept crime down, even though the statistics don't quite pan out to that. In any event, at the last presidential election candidate cycling, people were urging him to run. Former President of Fidel Ramos and a number of people in the business community. And they said, oh, we'll put up a billion pesos for you to run and all this kind of stuff. And he said, no, no, that's not my thing. It's not my thing. And the deadline passed and his daughter ran for mayor and not him. And so everybody was sort of that kind of a suspicious. Well, then one of the political parties, their candidate claimed he was sick or unhealthy and couldn't run and he withdrew and the party substituted him in. After the fact. So Duterte was a substitute candidate. He didn't run immediately for the president. Well, when it was happening, it looked that way. Although when you look back at it, it starts to look a little more like, oh, this thing was manufactured. And he wasn't the most popular candidate. He was in the opinion polls. Most of them, maybe there's one or two, but in most opinion polls, he was third or fourth. And the problem with the Philippines is there's no primaries. They adopted the American election system before Teddy Roosevelt created primaries. And so there are no primaries. So it's everybody runs and whoever gets the most votes wins. So it's really always a gamble. Nobody knows who the president's going to be until maybe a day or two before, if that. So yeah, so when he started running, he was third or fourth. But the top two or top three started getting hammered viciously by each of the other political parties. Grace Poe, who is very popular with the poor, she was challenged because of her citizenship. And they were filing and filing and filing court cases and cases in the Senate. She was a senator trying to just sort of smear her citizenship. And it eventually worked because she didn't win. What were they saying about her? Well, she was a foundling. And she was raised by someone who ran for president in 2004. And then he lost, whether he lost fairly or not, we'll never know. But then he died. And so she was very popular because of him and her own thing. And she was an actress. And her adopted mother was an actress. Her father was an actor. But she was a foundling. And so the people that were smearing her were saying, well, you can't be a Philippine citizen because under the Philippine Constitution, you take your citizenship from your father. And you don't have a father. And it was resolved by the Supreme Court just before the election, which was foundlings have a right to citizenship, just like people who know their parents. So Duterte was an attorney? Yes. All right. And did he grow up in Davao City? No, no. So he's from the Visayas. His family's from Lete. And he's actually, I wouldn't say that he's from an oligarchic family. But his family is part of the elite. He is related to the Marcosas. Because Imaldus is also from Lete, so. Yeah, so he wasn't this poor guy who went to law school and pulled himself up from his bootstraps type of thing. But he also didn't really play the manila-centric sort of elite politics landmortem. He wasn't quite a manila guy, right? I mean, so he went to Davao, did he practice law at all? Well, a little bit. But then he sort of had these slow-level political civil service positions. And that's where he sort of got. So during the dictatorship, during the Marcosas dictatorship, he was sort of in the middle somewhere. And then he got vaulted into a position of power under a keynote during her revolutionary dictatorship that lasted for 17 months. And then it converted into something that he was able to get the electorate involved in. And they just have supported him and his family. And he's actually created a dynasty with his own children. His daughter has been vice mayor. And I think she's now mayor, not sure. But yeah, he's established his own little dynasty in Davao. And so what is his goal? I mean, what's he trying to do is he has these crosswords for the United States, crosswords for Obama. And he has very nice words for China and for Russia. It sounds very familiar, actually. But what's he up to? Well, he describes himself, or he's been described, as a socialist. And he was a student of Joma Cison, Jose Maria Cison, who is the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, who's been designated by the United States as a terrorist and lives as an exile in the Netherlands and has since he was released from prison on political amnesty grounds decades ago. And so one of the things that President Aquino had said was before the election was, don't elect this guy. You're going to be letting the communists take over. And for most people, the Cold War dialogue doesn't really make sense to a lot of people in the Philippines anymore if it ever did. But the reverse of that is that Duterte has made statements that seem to support, at least in a real politics sense, the former socialist countries like China and Russia, and has sort of taken the strong anti-American stand, that it really has more to do with nationalism than it has to do with anything related to a political economy. I mean, it's a strand of nationalism. Unfortunately, it doesn't connect really with the economic part of it. So it's just sort of anti-American, but without really any kind of how does this help the poor? Well, and I did wonder about that. Because you watch old movies. You watch movies from right after World War II, and you got Return to Baton. And you have John Wayne, and then he has all these colonial Filipinos around him. And that's the image that Americans have. And I could see the Filipinos might have some resentment towards that. I mean, they fought the war themselves. And a lot of people, they weren't necessarily led by the Americans in fighting. And they gave up a lot. And I could see there could be some kind of a backlash. And I was wondering, is that part of this colonial American history that is coming back to hit us? Well, it's complicated. It definitely, in World War II, I think that my understanding is the Philippine perception of Americans with World War II actually was primarily positive. And it was actually the US war against the Philippines when they bought the Philippines from Spain, and then turned out they didn't really buy anything. And it had to sort of suppress the Philippine independence movement. And that's when Duterte makes historical statements, he actually refers to that period back there. But the resistance to that in popular culture is that a lot of senior citizens have very positive views of the US specifically related to World War II, because there's a tremendous amount of anti-Japanese sentiment that's based on what they did during World War II. And so there's a tension there. And then, of course, you have American popular culture that the young people are constantly subjected to at different levels, depending on where they are. Young people? Young people. OK, well, the average, the median age in the Philippines is 24 years old right now. So I'm talking about the 50% of the people in the country that are that age or younger. They have the American Hollywood culture, but then they also have not an emerging middle class, but there's the working class that work in call centers. And they have constant interaction with Americans and are constantly being trained and have to know what the latest idiom is to be able to be a neutral speaker to people that they deal with in call centers. So there's this tremendous cultural pressure on the Philippines where American culture is. And so when Duterte talks about anti-American stuff, it has this nationalist sort of like, oh, we're not slaves to your globalized culture that you're pushing on us or that's in us, but it's sort of hollow because there's no alternative that's being recommended. It's just sort of a throwback to this slogans of the 60s sort of thing. So OK, so my insight from these movies, these old movies that I watched as a kid, are actually positive. I mean, it sounds like that period of time, the World War II period of time, is a good cultural time for US and Philippine relationships. But it was that colonial time when the United States bought the Philippines or took over the Philippines and tried to make it a colony that Duterte maybe is going back to. Is that? Well, that's the sort of nationalist rhetoric that he's sort of bringing up. OK, so he makes these statements. And I mean, I get a little shocked when I see them. What do Filipino people, what is their reaction to these statements that he makes about some of them are personal and then some of them are general against the United States and then they're positive towards these other countries. Is there a feel for it or can you tell? Well, most ardent supporters, of course, just back up whatever he says. But I think most sort of the common Filipino just sort of takes it as this is our newest circus politician. I don't think people take it very seriously. The same people who support him are also the same people who online make very, very incendiary, anti-Chinese comments. I mean, it's the level where you almost think that they're going to start creating internment camps for people of Chinese interest in the Philippines just on some of the things that have been said over the last six months to a year since the Law of the Seas Convention Tribunal made their decision. So he makes these statements, but it's in the context of that it's not affecting in any way the anti-Chinese. I mean, there's already been, there's a long time anti-Chinese sentiment that was the Spanish sort of started and the Americans perpetuated. But it has ramped up to a whole new level in the last year or two, or I guess four years since the South Chinese China Sea dispute really came into focus. And you know, OK, so is there still a positive feeling about the United States? I mean, if I go there, am I going to be welcomed as an American, or is there a negative feeling? I mean, it's ambiguous to me. Yeah, I think there's probably a few spots that you'd want to avoid, but you know, well, not Davao City, actually, that would be one of the safe places, but I wouldn't venture too far away. But yeah, in certain parts of Mindanao and of, you know, Basilan and Tawi Tawi, there's probably some places where I would advise you, as the State Department does, don't go to those places. But I think in Manila, there isn't any kind of anti-American sentiment. I think if you looked Chinese, I would probably say be very cautious because who knows. But I don't think that an American, especially in the urban areas, would have any problem. Yeah, I don't see that there's really an anti-American sentiment. And that's one of the things with Duterte, which is a little bit confusing, because during the election, he said, if I have to, I'll get on a jet ski and retake the islands myself. So it's one of these things where he makes conflicting statements, similar to other now heads of state that also seem to make a few conflicting statements. And with him, he disclosed, I remember it must have been about a month or two ago, that he takes fentanyl. And he doesn't just take fentanyl, but he says it. He takes more than what's prescribed. And fentanyl, maybe your viewers don't know what that is, but it's an opioid that's 100 times more powerful than morphine. And one of the side effects is hallucinations. And he says, I think just a couple of days ago, he reaffirmed. People are saying, oh, he has cancer. That's why he's taking it. He said, no, no, no, I take it for back pain and this sort of stuff. And he says, I don't have cancer, but I feel like I'm on cloud nine when I take it. He says, my doctor tells me to cut it in half or in quarters, and I don't. I just take the whole thing. So there's sort of this thing, well, why does he say one thing? And then two days later, he says something. I don't think it's ideologically driven. I don't think they're sort of this dogmatic, glee-driven. I think that part of it just may be he is a small town mayor that's suddenly the head of state of a very large country, and he's apparently under the influence of fentanyl. So I mean, I don't want to minimize a lot of the things that he does because he treats national politics the way that you would consider a small town mayor to treat national politics. He says the first thing that comes to his mind, or I don't know if he even comes to his mind, it just passes through his mind. Absolutely. And so especially going to this South China sea matter, because I know that, as I understand it, part of his warming up to China was to try to make the ability for Filipino fishermen to go to some of these islands. What's happened with that? Has there been any progress? The fishermen supposedly are now allowed to go to these islands, and the real overtures to China, I think, have to do with the fact that the Chinese want to give development aid in the form of rapid infrastructure development aid to the Philippines. And that's what he wants. He wants access to that, because I think in the balance of things, he's trying to get as much as he can from a small town mayor. How can he get the most from all of the people that are possibly offering? And so I think he's not worried about the US stopping military aid and that sort of thing, but he definitely sees that Chinese development aid can be tapped into. So he thinks he's got the relationship with the US. That's not going to change. He's kind of playing it in his own mind off against the Chinese in order to get something more for them. And what's the Chinese goal in all of this? Well, they're doing the soft power approach, or they're trying to, the South China Sea's dispute is sort of an exception to the whole thing. But their approach is to sort of win over all of their neighbors in the same way that Japan, trying to reconcile over the abuses of World War II, gave tremendous amounts of development aid to all of the countries that it occupied during and before World War II. And I think China is trying to replicate that. There's been somewhat of a failure in Africa because of this issue of giving money to a dictator. So they're learning, essentially what the Americans have sort of learned is if you give money to a dictator who then puts it in Swiss bank accounts, doesn't endear the people to your country. It doesn't do the good that was intended. Well, I haven't heard that about Tu Terte. I mean, I haven't heard that he has private bank accounts. I guess I could always be surprised. No, no, and I'm not suggesting that that's going on. Although the Center for Investigative Journalism in the Philippines did show that when he became mayor, he had absolutely no money. And just when he became president, he apparently has net, his net worth is like five or $6 million. And essentially his annual rate of return. I mean, it's he every year it showed that he was making more and more money, but his annual rate of return was like 130% every year from 1987 until last year. So, you know, he's obviously must be very savvy investor. Yes. And I guess that would probably be the subject of another show is how people make money in Asia. But let me, let me kind of get to what do you think? I mean, what are your opinions? Where are we going with all of this? What, where, and I understand it's your opinion. Where do you think we're going with the relationships between the Philippines and the rest of the world now? And especially the United States. Well, I think, you know, especially since there's been a dramatic change in the federal government here in the United States, we sort of have to wait and see what's, what's going to happen in terms of how these two governments sort of interact. I am not certain that Duterte is going to last six years. And he's actually said to himself that he didn't think he was going to last six years. Most Philippine presidents get a three year mandate when they, everybody who's in Congress wants to be part of their party or wants to be part of the majority because the president has so much power. But after the three year mark, which is when they have the midterm elections, things change. So if he makes it to the three year mark, the last three years of his tenure may be completely different than the first. And what would happen? I mean, what, what, what happens in the three year period? I mean, tell me, I'm not, I'm not that familiar with that. Well, you know, the things that he wants to do is when he has the most support in Congress and can get most of it done. But the problem is, is that, you know, like with all politics, you know, that only works for so long. And then all of a sudden there's, you get develop enemies and they start working together. Yeah, the honeymoon period. Yeah, that's the honeymoon period. Actually, actually, okay. And because the Philippine president is so powerful relative to other countries, there is an incentive for, and there were a number of people who jumped ship out of the liberal party, which is a Kinos party, to join the super majority in the, in the House of Representatives. And so everybody's getting something, but that doesn't last, usually by the three year mark, that starts to fray and there could be a problem. And so in your mind, Duterte, what he's doing is just playing everybody off against the other to get the best he can for the Philippines. And Philippine people seem to disregard a lot of the offensive comments because they think he's doing some positive things. Well, I think the people who support his offensive comments and that sort of thing, I think that they like that because they're tired of these sort of elitist landlords who everything's polite and nice talk and nobody ever offends anybody and he doesn't, he breaks all of those rules. And so I think that people enjoy that because it's different than what they're used to. But unfortunately, the result or his plan doesn't, it's not necessarily different than the people that preceded him, it's just, he has a different style. So like the drug war, for example, you know, the people who are being killed are all poor people and it turns out most of them have nothing to do with drugs. But then the police who had sort of unbridled discretion to do whatever they wanted, he stopped that two weeks ago because a South Korean businessman was ransomed by the police and killed at the police station, at the national police station. And then he immediately revoked the police's powers to do his drug war. And so it's one of those things where it's like, well, okay, your policy is to stop drugs but the only people who are being affected by this are the poor. And then when the first sort of rich person to be a casualty of this and all of a sudden you, it looks like it has nothing to do with drugs and has to do with just sort of scapegoating people and that sort of thing.