Drive to assert sovereignty in WPS 'lost momentum' after 2016 award, former DFA chief says
MANILA, Philippines — On the fifth anniversary of the Philippines' historic win arbitral win against China's "nine-dash-line" claim, the country's former top diplomat hit what he said was a "failure of leadership" in asserting sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea.
At a forum Monday by the Stratbase Albert del Rosario Institute for Strategic and International Studies, former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario panned the Duterte administration for allegedly failing to act on China's fishermen, coast guard ships and maritime militia ships straying into the West Philippine Sea.
It has been five years since the Philippines legally won the South China Sea arbitration case before a United Nations-backed tribunal that invalidated China’s claim to historic rights over resources in the West Philippine Sea.
Since then, Del Rosario said, the "country’s fight for the West Philippine Sea has lost momentum as President [Rodrigo] Duterte decided to set aside the award in favor of Beijing’s promise of economic benefits."
"For the last five years, what we see is a betrayal of the Filipino people...One of the paramount constitutional mandates of the President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, 'is to secure the sovereignty of the State and the integrity of the national territory,'" he said Monday.
READ: Palace: 'All or nothing' policies in West Philippine Sea dangerous, unproductive
'Loyalty to a foreign power'
The former diplomat also questioned what he said was "Duterte's compromised loyalty to his country."
To this day, Beijing continues to reject the arbitral ruling that the Philippines won in The Hague in 2016 based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which held that China's sweeping nine-dash line claim has no legal basis.
The president has said he is helpless to do anything because the military is too weak to go up against China. Del Rosario and other critics of the government's policy in the West Philippine Sea have repeatedly said war is not the only way to assert Philippine sovereignty.
The Department of Foreign Affairs have been filing diplomatic protests over the presence of Chinese ships in the Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone.
During his election campaign in 2016, Duterte made his famous vow to ride a jetski toward the Spratlys, plant the Philippine flag, and challenge China. Years later, he claimed that this was an "obvious joke," adding that anyone who believed it was "stupid."
"Our countrymen believed in the message apparently conveyed by President Duterte through the jet ski metaphor: that he would stand up to China and protect the West Philippine Sea, consistent with the Constitution," Del Rosario said.
"This episode contributes to a widening belief among our countrymen that President Duterte betrayed the Constitution he swore to uphold and has consequently betrayed his countrymen who rely on him to protect the West Philippine Sea."
With less than a year left in Duterte's term, Del Rosario called the chief executive's track record in the West Philippine Sea "abysmal."
"When we reflect on past events, we believe that President Duterte’s actions fit into a disturbing pattern of loyalty to a foreign power," Del Rosario said.
'A way to escape accountability'
President Duterte has asserted that he cannot do anything on the maritime dispute as doing so, he claimed, would mean going to war with them.
In discussing the tensions in the West Philippine Sea, the president said in his State of the Nation Address before Congress in 2020 admitted: "I'm really useless there and there's nothing I can do"—a statement that Del Rosario said speaks volumes.
"We can say that there are two out of several of President Duterte’s statements that have turned out to be true: first, that he is “inutil” in protecting the West Philippine Sea; and second, that he 'simply loves Xi Jinping,'" the former DFA chief said. — with reports from Patricia Lourdes Viray
- Latest
- Trending
