While tensions appear to have eased in the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea)—as shown by the absence of harassment complaints from Filipino fishermen plying the route—experts still dissuaded both the current and incoming administrations from heeding calls to suspend the case before the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA).
“We will lose face in the international community if we suspend the arbitration case, because we helped put the UN together, and we’re trying to provide leadership in the UN on behalf of developing countries,” political analyst and University of the Philippines Vice President for Public Affairs J. Prospero E. de Vera III told the BusinessMirror.
Pulling out of that course of action to enforce the Philippines’s territorial claims, de Vera said, would be ironic to the Philippines’s earlier pronouncements of reposing its trust on the UN arbitration court’s judiciousness in settling territorial disputes.
But while awaiting the outcome of the arbitration case, de Vera said the Philippines should still pursue other areas of cooperation with China that are less contentious. This will enable the two countries to build upon their flourishing bilateral relations, as shown by their trade figures.
Wrong course
According to the latest figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority, China is the second-biggest trading partner of the Philippines during the first semester of 2015, next to Japan and surpassing the United States. For the said period, China accounted for $7.81 billion, or 13.1 percent of the total foreign trade of the Philippines. Exports to China were valued at $3.07 billion, while imports totaled $4.74 billion.
He said the mistake of the Aquino administration was the impression it gave the people that arbitration is the only viable response to China’s bullying of Philippine military and fishermen operating in the disputed areas in the West Philippine Sea.
“That, in a sense, closed all possible options and put the President in a corner where he had to do something strong, such as the filing of the arbitration case,” de Vera said.
Sovereignty issues not covered
The outcome of the arbitration case should not be considered as the end-all and be-all of the bilateral relations with China, since, as pointed out by the director of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law’s Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea (IMLOS), the arbitration case will not touch on sovereignty issues in the disputed territory.
IMLOS Director and UP College of Law Prof. Jay Batongbacal said only maritime rights and jurisdictional issues arising from the disputes will be resolved in the arbitration case, since sovereignty issues were expressly excluded from the case.
“It is probably not prudent at this time to suspend the proceedings at this late stage, after all the effort invested in it. In any case, the territorial dispute will not be settled by the case; sovereignty issues were expressly excluded by the Philippines from the arbitration. The arbitration will only settle maritime rights and jurisdictional issues arising from the disputes,” Batongbacal said in a text message to the BusinessMirror.
The outgoing Aquino administration was earlier asked to suspend the arbitration case before the UN to give incoming President Rodrigo R. Duterte a free hand in crafting his foreign policy.
In response, Malacañang said it is already too late to do so, since Article 29 of the Rules of the PCA provides that the hearings, with respect to the case filed by the Philippines, are already considered closed after the Philippines presented all the necessary evidence to prove its case.
“The case is considered submitted and we are awaiting judgment by the PCA. Moving for the suspension of the proceedings at this very late stage of the proceedings is, thus, inappropriate. We are confident that the Office of the Solicitor General was able to thoroughly present and properly defend our position on the matter pertaining to the West Philippine Sea,” Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. said.
Zero harassment, for now?
Filipino fishermen in the South China Sea have been plying their trade without being harassed by the Chinese coast guard for a month, officials said, in what could be an early sign of easing tensions under Duterte, who is due to be sworn in on June 30.
Authorities haven’t received any complaints from local fishermen for weeks about the Chinese interfering with their catch near the disputed Scarborough Shoal, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Director Asis Perez said by telephone on Tuesday. “That should be the norm, our fishermen shouldn’t be harassed and hosed by China because that area is ours,” he said.
Filipino fishermen have often played cat and mouse with Chinese coast guards stationed at Scarborough, a chain of reefs and rocks about 240 kilometers from Zambales that China seized from the Philippines in 2012. China has become more assertive in recent years in pressing its claims to more than 80 percent of the South China Sea, a rich fishing ground and one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, which is also an artery for China’s energy supplies from the Middle East.
“The easing level of harassment by the Chinese coast guard is a far cry from when Scarborough Shoal was virtually off-limits to our fishermen,” Party-list Rep. Ace Acedillo of Magdalo, a former air force pilot, said by telephone. “This could be in anticipation of the new administration and will pave the way for opening the lines of communication between the two countries.”
Balance interest
Since his victory in the May 9 presidential election, Duterte has adopted a more conciliatory tone on the dispute with China than President Aquino, who brought China before an international arbitration tribunal and strengthened the Philippine alliance with the US to deter China’s military expansion in the area.
“We should always balance our interest with the interests of our regional neighbors and the other superpower, which is the US,” Acedillo said. “While an independent foreign policy is paramount, we should also accept the fact that we don’t exist in a vacuum.”
Duterte asked Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua to allow local fishermen near the shoal, when the two met on May 16, Duterte told reporters at the weekend. “If you will disallow troll fishing, commercial fishing, I would understand. But those bancas—don’t crush them—because the Filipino also needs to eat.”
The last harassment incident happened on April 15, when stones were hurled against Filipino fishermen near the shoal. A month earlier the Chinese coast guard used water cannons to drive away local fishermen, Perez said. Last week a fisherman who came from the shoal reported that the Chinese didn’t interfere with any of the 20 Filipino fishing boats there, Perez said, adding that the fisheries bureau used to receive reports of harassment at least once a week.
(With Bloomberg News)