6
FORUM July-August 2011
Ambassador SP Lopez signing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights during the Twentyfirst Session of the General Assembly, United Nations Headquarters, New York, December 20, 1966. Photo from http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/images/ha/iccpr/02-l.jpg.
Salvador P. Lopez: Diplomat and Nationalist By Celeste Ann Castillo Llaneta
O
n a wall on the third floor of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) building along Roxas Boulevard is a bronze plaque bearing former UP President Salvador P. Lopez’s signature. The bronze marker is one of the 11 signature markers the DFA installed last February to honor 11 former Foreign Affairs secretaries who “vigorously promoted Philippine national interests in the international stage.”1 Dedicating an entire floor of the DFA building might seem at first to be an overgenerous tribute to a former Foreign Affairs secretary who served for only a year—from 1963 to 1964—before certain disagreements between him and then President Diosdado Macapagal led him to resign and take on the post of ambassador-at-large.2 The DFA press release also added, rather shortly, that “Lopez likewise served the country as Philippine Permanent Representative to the United Nations for six years”—from 1964 to 1969, and from 1986 to 1987. What was left unsaid in the press release— and the reason for the bronze plaque on the DFA’s third floor—is Salvador P. Lopez’s contributions not only to nation-building and to Philippine foreign policy but to the United Nations (UN) as well; and his distinguished career in the foreign service spanning more than 23 years in seven countries.3 The consummate diplomat B e f o r e h e b e c a m e s e c r e t a r y o f D FA , Lopez served as deputy chief of the Philippine mission to the UN where he was involved with numerous councils and commissions, including the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). He was elected to the UN Economic Social Council as rapporteur on matters relating to freedom of information4, and drafted the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) resolution on human rights.5 He served as ambassador to Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. He was ambassador to France (1955-1962) when he was appointed undersecretary of Foreign Affairs (1961-1963)
under then Secretary Emmanuel Pelaez. After his stint as Foreign Affairs secretary, he served as ambassador to the United States (US) and concurrently as the country’s permanent representative to the UN. He gave this up to become president of the University of the Philippines in January 1969, thereby “exchanging the problems of the world for the problems of the campus,” as Lopez himself put it.6 He returned to a career in diplomacy and the foreign service in 1986, when he was recalled to represent the Philippines in the UN once more. In 1988, he served concurrently as ambassador in the DFA and consultant in the Office of the Vice-President of the Philippines. He resigned as ambassador in 1989, but continued as consultant in the OVP. 7 “There were many members of the [Foreign Affairs] staff who assisted him, but he was the main brain. In fact, he was the brains behind Carlos P. Romulo. Carlos Romulo was the front man…the president of the UN General Assembly, but all the brain work that had been done at that point was SP Lopez’s,” recalled UP Political Science Professor Emeritus Emerenciana Yuvienco Arcellana. “That’s why SP ascended the diplomatic ladder under Romulo’s time. In fact, Romulo had Lopez succeed him as UP president, precisely because he believed in the man’s brains.” Bridging the ideological divide Lopez’s achievements in diplomacy and foreign policy should be understood in the backdrop of the world he moved in. In the years between 1946 and 1969, most of the globe was locked in the ideological conflict known as the Cold War, deeply divided between the US and the Free World, and the socialist countries dominated by the Soviet Union and China. Attempting to moderate this conflict, the newly-established UN worked to maintain peace, security, harmony and respect for human rights and welfare among its polarized member-countries as best as it could. The Philippines, which had just regained its
independence, found itself caught amidst these divergent geopolitical tides. As Lopez wrote in his essay on “Trends in Philippine Foreign Policy,” which was published in Trends in the Philippines II by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in 1979: “The ‘close and special ties’ which bound the Philippines to the United States—ties which, in Dr. [Onofre D.] Corpuz’s felicitous phrase, were ‘too close for comfort and too special for self-respect’—flourished after independence in 1946…The Military Bases Agreement, the Military Assistance Pact, and the Mutual Defense Treaty were products of this period. PhilippineAmerican bonds were perhaps strongest during the early 1950s when Ramon Magsaysay served, first, as Secretary of National Defense and then as President. The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) alliance was established under the Manila Pact of 1954. Yet, it was also during the Magsaysay era that the slogan ‘Asia for the Asians’ was coined and its underlying philosophy clearly enunciated.”8 “In terms of our foreign policy directions, SP Lopez was at the forefront of redirecting the obviously American–leaning orientation of our foreign policy into a more open and cosmopolitan one, in the sense of giving importance to Southeast Asia, for instance, and China [and other socialist countries],” Prof. Malaya Ronas of the UP Diliman Department of Political Science said. “I think this was a point of difference between him, when he was secretary of Foreign Affairs, and President Macapagal, and that difference eventually led to his [Lopez’s] resignation.” “As early as 1964, I had urged the review of our policy towards the Soviet Union and the other socialist states of Eastern Europe—the first high official of the Philippine government to do so,” Lopez wrote. 9 “I advanced two considerations which, in my view, made such a review highly desirable in [the context of] national interest: first, the need for an Asian policy that would take due account of the emergence of China as a power in Asia; and second, the need to reduce DIPLOMAT AND NATIONALIST, p. 7