A Republican administration has a “clearer view” about world politics and “firmness” in decision-making, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said Tuesday on the eve of the tightly-contested United States presidential election between Republican incumbent Donald J. Trump and former vice president and Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Locsin shared this observation as he declined to comment on the possible outcome of the US presidential race tomorrow, November 4 (Nov. 3 in the United States), saying that as foreign secretary, he should not be commenting on the internal issues of other countries in the same manner that officials from other countries should not criticize President Duterte.
“What I have seen is that Republican foreign policy experts, the people in charge of American foreign policy, and the Republican administration seem to have a clearer view of the world and more firmness in their decision (on) what to do about it,” Locsin said during an interview over CNN Philippines.
The DFA secretary recalled that he was actually “offended” when Martial Law was declared in 1972 and the United States, then led by the late President Richard Nixon, a Republican, did not pose any objection to former President Ferdinand Marcos’s imposition of military rule which led to the destruction Philippine democracy.
“I got a little offended and I should be prejudiced against the Republicans. Throughout all that time, those of us who believed in freedom pinned our hopes on Democratic administrations that are coming like Jimmy Carter,” Locsin said.
Carter won in the 1976 US presidential race following a fallout of the Watergate scandal that resulted in the abrupt resignation of Nixon.
Locsin, however, lamented that even under the Carter administration, nothing happened to the benefit of the Philippines.
“Carter is a great man, a man with a tremendous heart, nothing happened under his watch, zero. And then comes Ronald Reagan, a good friend of the Marcoses. And he looks at the situation,” Locsin remembered.
It was during the time of President Reagan when Marcos fled to the United States in the middle of the historic People Power Revolution in 1986.