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FROM 2016 to 2022, then-president Rodrigo Duterte was the star of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the non-Western part of the world. Here was a president who played a key role in the historic transition from the 500-year period of Western colonialism to the now-rising multipolar world. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has reversed this historic position, and in the 10 months since February, the Philippines has become a pariah to the world.

It has come to such a sorry state that Heydarian, one of the chief apologists for the Philippine pivot to the US, has penned an opinion piece in the neocolonial rag Asia Times entitled “The Philippines in a lonely fight with China.”

This came after Asean’s primus inter pares member Singapore floated two alerts. First, Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen tangentially warned the Philippines to cool down tensions in the South China Sea, followed by its prime minister Lee Hsien Long obliquely asking the Philippines if it is sure that it wants “to get into a fight where you will be the battleground?”

Obviously, these ”potpot patriots” are itching to push the Philippines, like the now devastated Ukraine, into the boiling pot. Only the real patriots have the capacity to love their country more.

The Americans are trying to wreck Asean and isolate the Philippines. All of its members know it. On Oct. 29, 2023, an American fellow of the Asia Maritime Transparency Institute (AMTI) of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that “Asean has proven ineffective in addressing rising tensions in the South China Sea disputes in recent years due to an inability to achieve consensus among all 10 members.”

This cross-eyed view of this wrecking job is evident. Asean has been an outstanding success, having ensured that peace and dialogue rule over the region and over the South China Sea. It has only failed in the eyes of America because it has prevented conflict and promoted solidarity for peace and prosperity.

Asean, like the rest of the world, is beginning to take note of the Philippines as a leper from a bygone colonial era. Even these “potpot patriots” much-touted treaty ally, the US, at the sidelines of the recent San Francisco Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, saw it fit to subject President Marcos to a treatment befitting a “stooge” whom it set the meeting between him, the president of the Republic, and Kamala Harris, its mere vice president, in a storage room.