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SAYING
that the country’s archipelagic baseline bill up for
approval at the House of Representatives “contains
technical inconsistencies and potential weaknesses,” a
legislator has filed a substitute bill, which he claimed
would be unassailable under international law.
In
filing his own version of the baseline bill, Kilusan ng
Bagong Lipunan Rep. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of Ilocos Norte
claimed that House Bill (HB) 3216, authored by Lakas
Rep. Antonio Cuenco of Cebu, chairman of the House
Committee on Foreign Affairs, and which is awaiting
third and final reading at the House, was technically
flawed because it violates the clear and unequivocal
guidelines provided under United Nations Convention on
the Law of the Sea (Unclos).
In his
sponsorship statement of his bill, Marcos said HB 3216
specifically violates Paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 of Article
47 of Unclos that is defining
the length of baselines, delimiting the general
configuration of an archipelago and limiting the use of
low-tide elevations in defining base points.
“By
including the entire Kalayaan Island Group [KIG] and the
Scarborough Shoal in the definition of our baselines,
the present bill [HB 3216] runs counter to the spirit
and letter of Unclos, thus opening the entire measure to
rejection and nonrecognition by the international
community,” said Marcos, son of deposed President
Ferdinand Marcos.
Marcos
proposed in his bill to exclude KIG and the Scarborough
Shoal under the so-called regime of islands, the same
suggestion earlier raised by Malacañang in its letter to
House leaders.
“This
way, the definition of our baselines will be
unassailable under international law, while maintaining
and, in my view, reaffirming and strengthening our claim
on the KIG and Scarborough Shoal,” Marcos said. Under HB
3216, the country’s archipelagic baseline jurisdiction
would cover the disputed Spratly Islands and Scarborough
Shoal—and would unnecessarily entangle the country in a
web of conflicting claims over said areas. “Finally, it
has potential weaknesses because, as it now reads, its
chances of passing in the Senate and being signed into
law are closer to zero than a hundred percent,” Marcos
said of HB 3216.
PDP-Laban Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. of Makati City, who is
supporting Cuenco’s bill said Marcos certainly would
praise his own bill and discredit the other.
“This is
a free country. You know it’s like a mother. Have you
heard a mother say her baby is ugly? In other words,
this is a bill that only its author can love,” Locsin
said in a telephone interview. |
