Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Tuesday raised the possibility of bringing before the United Nations the case of the China Coast Guard personnel driving away the crew of Reporter’s Notebook from the Panatag or Scarborough Shoal.
He said if the situation escalated to a certain level he might prefer to go the UN to settle the issue.
“I prefer to respond when the occasion arises in the United Nations,” Locsin said in an interview over GMA.
He made his statement even as a Palace ally on Tuesday slammed the detractors of President Rodrigo Duterte for their “misguided nationalism.”
He criticized Duterte’s critics for attacking Duterte’s “pragmatic and legal approach” to Manila’s issue with Beijing over the West Philippine Sea.
At the same time, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, vice chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee on National Defense, said Duterte was not surrendering anything with the Memorandum of Understanding on gas and oil development because no less than Acting Senior Chief Justice Antonio Carpio and former Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario had found nothing wrong or illegal with the agreement.
Earlier, Locsin said he was not inclined at filing a diplomatic protest because it would be “like throwing paper against a brick wall.”
“There were diplomatic protests filed by [former Foreign Secretary Alan Peter] Cayetano. There were seven I think. I have a different view. My view is that a diplomatic protest is like throwing paper against a brick wall,” Locsin said.
He said Panatag was a “conflicted area” as both the Philippines and China were claiming ownership of it.
However, the country’s top diplomat said journalists should not be barred from going to the Scarborough Shoal to do their job.
Locsin said if the incident happened again, he might agree to the previous deal he had rejected as regards the coordination between the Philippines and China in patrolling the area. With Maricel V. Cruz