It is disgusting for former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario to use a diplomatic passport thinking this would allow him to slip unnoticed into a country whose head of state he accused of crimes against humanity, in order to attend to his private business, that is, a directors’ meeting of his main income source, the First Pacific Co. Ltd. But what is more appalling is that, since 2016, he should have given up any claim to being a diplomat. First, he is the only — and hopefully the last — foreign affairs secretary directly responsible for losing Philippine territory: Bajo de Masinloc, internationally called Scarborough Shoal, over which both we and China claim sovereignty. He lost Bajo de Masinloc when he ordered on June 2, 2012 our two remaining government vessels in the lagoon of the shoal to leave the next morning, in effect turning over the disputed area — after eight weeks of that episode called the “Scarborough Shoal Stand-off” — to China, which then sealed it off.

Tiglao, R. D. (2019, June 26). Del Rosario: The worst foreign affairs secretary in our history. Philippine Daily Inquirer, pp. A1, A5.