ENDEAVOR
When I learned that former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario passed away the other day while traveling to San Francisco, snapshots of our time together in the Cabinet of President Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III, flashed back in my mind.
Secretary Albert occupied the front row on the left side of the airplane cabin, across where the President was seated, whenever he traveled overseas with him and members of the Cabinet. He would engage us in banter and light talk. When needed, he joined the President in walking to the back of the plane to answer reporters’ questions – either ahead of a visit to a foreign land or an ASEAN or APEC summit.
I recall one of my first interactions with him, at the iconic Fullerton Hotel where meetings were scheduled between President Aquino and Singapore business leaders. “Good morning, Mr. Secretary,” he said in his deep and gentle baritone. He shared a vignette from his high school days at Xavier High School in New York, a Jesuit institution with a military regiment. He said one of the things he liked doing was spit polishing his boots early in the morning. It made him look forward to a bright and active day. He was always a cheerful presence in his unique way.
He was appointed Foreign Affairs Secretary by President Aquino in February 2011, or eight months into his term. That was the time at which a period of unrest called the Arab spring affected Filipinos living and working in the Middle East. While meeting in his office with a small group of Cabinet members, President Aquino asked to speak on the phone with Secretary Del Rosario. He was surprised to learn that the latter had gone to the Middle East to oversee the evacuation to safer ground of Filipinos at risk.
Dealing with the South China Sea situation became the main concern of his watch at the DFA. As the chief architect of Philippine foreign policy, the President relied on the Foreign Affairs Secretary’s advice. The decision to elevate the issue to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (also known as the Arbitral Tribunal) was reached due to: first, an increasing number of incidents involving Filipino fisherfolk, the Philippine Coast Guard and the Philippine Navy in the West Philippine Sea; and the continuing impasse over the crafting of a Declaration on a Code of Conduct on the South China Sea which had been pending in ASEAN for over a decade.
He assembled a topnotch team to prepare the Philippine position, in coordination with the Office of the Solicitor General, then headed by Francis Jardeleza (who later became Supreme Court Associate Justice) and later by Florin Hilbay; and the Office of Executive Secretary Paquito N. Ochoa, Jr.
On July 12, 2016, barely two weeks after President Aquino completed his term, the Arbitral Tribunal upheld in a resounding manner the Philippine position, stating in its ruling:
“China’s claims to historic rights, or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction, with respect to the maritime areas of the South China Sea encompassed by the relevant part of the ‘nine-dash line’ are contrary to the Convention and without lawful effect to the extent that they exceed the geographic and substantive limits of China’s maritime entitlements under the Convention. The Convention superseded any historic rights or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction in excess of the limits imposed therein.”
Despite this decisive ruling, the succeeding administration appeared reluctant to assert the Philippine position. In 2020, however, President Duterte delivered an emphatic address to the UN General Assembly at which he asserted the Philippines’ determination to witness the enforcement of the Arbitral Tribunal’s ruling: “The award is now part of international law, beyond compromise and beyond the reach of passing governments to dilute, diminish, or abandon.”
Secretary Albert persevered in his relentless advocacy of Philippine sovereignty over its territorial waters. Through it all, he epitomized coolness under fire. Just as he was a champion of Philippine sovereignty, he was a paragon of civility.
In his best-selling book, A World Waiting to be Born: Civility Rediscovered, Dr. Scott Peck defined civility as “consciously motivated organizational behavior that is ethical in submission to a Higher Power.” He said that the advocacy of civility is brought to the fore by the condition of incivility: “Our illness is Incivility – morally destructive patterns of self-absorption, callousness, manipulativeness, and materialism so ingrained in our routine behavior that we do not even recognize them. There is a deepening awareness that something is seriously wrong with our personal and organizational lives.”
Secretary Albert personified empathy, sensitivity and respectfulness toward others. He was a kind and gentle person; everyone who met or spoke with him came away edified by his heartwarming presence.
Thanks for your friendship and your service to our country, Secretary Albert.