The Philippines is in a high-stakes maritime confrontation with a superpower.

And we are letting a uniformed official behave like a Facebook heckler.

If the Marcos administration is serious about defending the West Philippine Sea — and serious about being treated as a serious state — then Philippine Coast Guard Commodore Jay Tarriela should be removed immediately as spokesperson on the West Philippine Sea. If he refuses to comply with the discipline required of public office, he should resign.

Because what Tarriela has done is not bravery.

It is recklessness disguised as patriotism.

His public mockery and reckless depiction of Chinese President Xi Jinping — a head of state of a country with which the Philippines maintains bilateral relations — is not merely “undiplomatic.” It is embarrassing. It cheapens the Philippine position. It makes the country look unserious at the very moment we need maximum credibility.

And yes, it humiliates us.

There is a difference between firmness and foolishness. Between transparency and taunting. Between national defense and personal performance.

Tarriela either does not understand the difference—or, worse, understands it and does not care.

Let’s be clear: the Philippines has legitimate grievances in the West Philippine Sea. Chinese harassment of Filipino vessels and fishermen has been widely documented. It is a serious issue of sovereignty and international law.

But here is what a mature government understands: you do not strengthen your case by acting like a clown.

A ranking official of the Philippine Coast Guard is not a private citizen. He is not a vlogger. He is not a partisan keyboard warrior. He is a uniformed officer of the state — and therefore a walking diplomatic signal.

Every word he says is interpreted as policy.

That is the point many Filipinos seem to forget. The world does not parse our internal bureaucratic distinctions. When a senior Philippine official publicly mocks Xi, foreign governments and foreign media do not say, “Oh, that’s just him.”

They say, “The Philippines is escalating.”

And then the Philippines — the actual government — has to clean up the mess.

Tarriela’s defenders will say: the Coast Guard has a duty to communicate.

True. But only the unserious believe that means the Coast Guard has a duty to freelance foreign policy.

The Coast Guard’s job is operational reporting: what happened at sea, where, when, and what was done. The Coast Guard can document incidents, release videos, and provide transparency.

But the Coast Guard is not the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The proper channel for diplomatic protest is the DFA, with support from the Department of National Defense and the National Security Council. That is why those institutions exist.

When a Coast Guard officer starts acting like the country’s chief diplomat — or worse, like its chief comedian — he violates the logic of statecraft. He blurs institutional roles. He injects ego into a national security issue. And he risks turning a strategic dispute into a personal feud.

That is not just “bad optics.”

That is a national security problem.

Because China is not some random internet opponent. China is a sophisticated state with a disciplined propaganda apparatus and an enormous appetite for exploiting mistakes.

Beijing does not need to win the West Philippine Sea through force alone. It can win by narrative.

All it needs is for the Philippines to look irrational, unstable, and unserious — so that the world shrugs, ASEAN hedges, and even allies grow weary.

And what better gift could the Philippines hand China than a uniformed official publicly mocking Xi Jinping?

It makes China’s job easier.

It allows Beijing to paint the Philippines as a provocateur rather than a victim of maritime coercion. It gives Chinese messaging a clean line: “Look how disrespectful and hostile they are.” It shifts attention away from China’s actions and toward the Philippines’ tone.

That is what strategic self-sabotage looks like.

Tarriela’s favorite alibi is also the weakest: “China is bullying us.”

So what?

China’s bullying is precisely why the Philippines must be disciplined. You do not respond to coercion by making yourself look small. You respond by raising your standards, tightening your institutions, and projecting maturity.

A professional state does not handle maritime coercion with sarcasm.

It handles it with documentation, diplomacy, deterrence, and alliances.

Tarriela’s conduct also violates something deeper than diplomatic protocol: it violates Filipino values.

Filipinos may be emotional. Filipinos may be outspoken. But Filipinos also understand dignity. We know the difference between courage and arrogance. We know that a public official represents the nation — not himself.

We do not send officials to the world stage to make the country look like a comment section.

And yet that is what is happening.

The Marcos administration should not pretend this is harmless. In a volatile region, words matter. Signals matter. Messaging discipline matters. The West Philippine Sea is not a stage for personal branding.

If Tarriela wants to mock Xi, he can do so after resigning — as a private citizen, on his own platform, without dragging the Philippine state into his performance.

But as long as he is a uniformed officer and spokesperson, his words are not his.

They are ours.

And Filipinos did not sign up to be represented this way.

The fix is simple.

Remove him as spokesperson. Reassign him. Or ask for his resignation. Then restore institutional discipline: Coast Guard reports facts; DND manages security posture; DFA speaks for the Republic.

That is how real states behave.

Because China is not threatened by Philippine mockery.

China is threatened by a coherent Philippines.

And right now, coherence is exactly what Commodore Tarriela is undermining.