"The Duterte administration should listen to the people."
"The Duterte administration should listen to the people."
A month or so after the controversial Reed Bank incident involving a Filipino fishing boat and a Chinese trawler, public opinion on the matter has scarcely subsided. The horrific details from the altercation were rightly met with massive indignation: the fishing boat anchored while the crew rested, the collision with the Chinese trawler that led to the boat’s sinking, and the 22 Filipino fishermen left to drown on the high seas.
If the early June incident marked a typical episode of Chinese aggression in Philippine waters, a recent Social Weather Station survey confirms that a broad majority of Filipinos rejects and opposes such brazen incursion.
For instance, a huge 93 percent said they believe it is important to regain control of the West Philippine Sea, while 89 percent said it feels wrong to do nothing. These numbers offer a stinging rebuke of the defeatist and lackadaisical line of the Duterte administration, which had all but given up any position of strength in the disputed waters, out of a professed—and ridiculous—fear of starting a war with Beijing.
The other findings of the survey are similarly critical of government inaction, if not ineptitude, on the West Philippine Sea issue. Eighty-three percent said the matter should be brought to international organizations like the United Nations, 83 percent said the Philippines should form alliances to help us defend our territorial waters, 87 percent said it is very important that the country should assert its rights in the West Philippine Sea, and 87 percent believe we should arrest and prosecute Chinese fishermen who cause the destruction of the marine environment there.
It is important to note that for all these the trend had seen an upward swing in terms of opposition to Chinese incursion. This is despite two things: first, the government’s constant “lawyering” for Beijing, it seems, hewing close to whatever line the Asian superpower was peddling, and, second, the much-repeated but poorly conceived argument that balking at Chinese aggression would lead to war.
The second one, in particular, is patently misguided, a ruse to intimidate Filipinos into submission. It sets up a false dichotomy, as if Manila’s response to Chinese incursion was limited to two things: either letting Chinese fishermen fish in Philippine waters, or going to war with China. Anyone with a cursory understanding of contemporary geopolitics and economics will know that China, a behemoth reliant on global trade, stands to lose the most in the event of a war.
Moreover, Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, during a recent forum hosted by Stratbase ADR Institute, issued a reminder that both the Philippine Constitution and international law prohibit a country from going to war to settle a territorial or maritime dispute.
“It is clearly unconstitutional for the Philippine government to go to war with China to enforce the arbitral award. It is also against international law to go to war to enforce the arbitral award. The United Nations charter has outlawed the resort to war to settle territorial or maritime disputes between states,” he said.
Carpio is referring to the country’s legal victory at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016. The magistrate hit the administration for not only shelving the potentially decisive ruling, but more so for intentionally committing an act that risked waiving or diminishing the implications of the award when Duterte revealed that he had a verbal agreement with President Xi Jinping that allows Chinese fishermen to fish in Reed Bank.
Carpio had rightly described the agreement as lopsided; Filipino fishermen didn’t gain any new fishing grounds, while their Chinese counterparts suddenly had uninhibited access to more.
He explained: “The agreement of course will substantially diminish the arbitral award as a self-inflicted blow again to our sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea. We must therefore do everything to convince the present government not to confirm or ratify the supposed verbal agreement with China.”
The controversial verbal agreement also behooves the question of whether Beijing had recently exhibited any friendly gestures toward Manila in the context of the dispute. Not if you ask Filipino fishermen who regularly have to contend with constant Chinese intimidation on the high seas. Not if you ask the residents of Pag-asa Island, who have to deal with hundreds of Chinese vessels circling the island.
Thus, between remaining submissive to Beijing’s whims and getting involved in an illegal war lie a range of options and scenarios for Manila and Filipinos. Justice Carpio, for instance, urged the Philippine Navy to join the Freedom of Navigation and Over Flight Operations, which he described as “a peaceful and lawful exercise of the rights of the navies of coastal states.
He encouraged the public, meanwhile, to stay vigilant and prevent any further erosion of the award’s meaning. “Given the unfortunate decision to shelve the award, it falls on us ordinary Filipinos to find creative and viable means to enforce the Award, so we may be able to defend and preserve our national patrimony.”
Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales and Ambassador Albert del Rosario did such an initiative in filing a communication before the International Criminal Court as a way of enforcing the award to impose individual criminal responsibility for China’s acts already found unlawful by the arbitral tribunal.
Now that a survey has revealed a near-unanimous national sentiment on China and the West Philippine Sea, the Duterte administration is hard pressed to listen to the people. After all, it is fond of using continuing popular support for the president as a means of defending controversial policies. In the same vein, it must pay attention to what is turning out to be an increasingly singular voice against Chinese incursion.
