Let us not squander our moral and legal victory!

by Rene Abad / July 25, 2016

I question the appropriateness and timeliness of the decision of the government to go to bilateral talks with China at this time.

The Philippine delegation to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal in The Hague, seat of government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. (DFA file photo)

We have now our moral and legal victory with the help of our allies in ASEAN, EU, US and other countries from around the world. We should not squander this by appeasing the country that has done harm on our Pilipino nation, by Pilipino appeasers going into an environment of bilateral talks where the 50x stronger opposition has all the aces.

We have to build first with our allies a consensus around the ITLOS/UNCLOS decision. The immediate task is to come out with a Code of Conduct in the South East Asian Sea to govern behavior in the area. With the ITLOS/UNCLOS decision, hopefully China will now participate in this process. Taiwan as a prosperous and democratic country should be part of the process.

Filipinos celebrating the Hague ruling on the Southeast Asian Sea (Photo via Nikkei Asian Review)

Vietnamese allies congratulate the Philippines. (Photo via Deccan Chronicle)

The US sent aircraft carriers USS John C. Stennis (left) and USS Ronald Reagan (right) ahead of the Hague ruling to make sure everybody would behave properly and react soberly. (Photo via The Diplomat)

Foreign affairs secretary Perfecto Yasay (right photo) sported a sad face in announcing the Hague verdict, a stance adopted to avoid antagonizing China. But during an earlier occasion (left photo), he was all smile in the presence of the Chinese ambassador to the Philippines.

We have been able to bear the sacrifices as a result of China occupying our EEZ and preventing us, specially our fishermen, from benefiting from what the ITLOS/UNCLOS has reaffirmed as our EXCLUSIVE area for resources utilization. We can bear it more for decades to come, without compromising what we have won, a victory in the international arena that is hard to come by for our Pilipino nation. The immediate task is to take care of our countrymen who are negatively affected by China’s greedy occupation of our EEZ, not talking to the country that has caused the suffering.

Chinese forces are preventing Filipino fishermen from fishing in Scarborough shoal, thus adversely affecting their means of livelihood.

Former president Fidel V. Ramos has accepted the offer of Pres. Rodrigo Duterte to be the special envoy to China for bilateral talks regarding the West Philippine Sea. (Photo via GMA news online)

If China’s concern is access to resources in OUR EEZ, as any other country, they can buy from 100% Pilipino companies that will harvest and process the resources from our EEZ. We should appreciate as fellow human beings, the resource needs of China’s 1.4 billion population.

We Pilipinos deserve a Strong Pilipino National Defense.

Even PNoy’s substantial defense upgrade is not enough to reverse the more than 35 years of neglect of our Defense System. Not even 1 substantial defense system was acquired — no fighter, no corvette, no missile; just cargo aircraft and vessels, large patrol vessels, helicopters, etc. Not 1 defense system that can go toe-to-toe with the opposition. Instead, we continued our dependence on the US that have turned our whole country as their military staging area. Again bad for us who might again be in the middle of a war between military giants. It’s important that the Philippines as one of the top 15 biggest countries, have our own strong defense system to protect our independence, sovereignty and interests.

Solicitor General Jose Calida has announced that the Philippine government will name two rocks in the West Philippine Sea after former DFA chief Albert del Rosario and Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio for their invaluable support in winning the country’s arbitration case against China. He said the award could be used as a focal point of state and non-state actors to bring countries in line with international law. Calida described the Hague ruling as a “historic win” and a “crowning glory of international law”. (Photo via abs-cbn.com)

Let us all guard against the squandering our moral and legal victory.

Let us push for the strengthening of our alliances towards total victory in our EEZ.

Please repost if you concur.…………………………………………………………………………………

(Rene Abad is my erstwhile classmate at the Philippine Science High School. He has a firmly and fiercely pro-Filipino view of things that is why he might sound anti-US or anti-Chinese now and then, depending from which direction the perceived threat is coming from at a given moment. But I suppose he is simply pro-Filipino. His original article had no photos; I am the one who include them here. I like this part best: “We have to build first with our allies a consensus around the ITLOS/UNCLOS decision.” I think that is the best way forward, aside of course from strengthening our national defense and furthering our alliance building.This is also a highly important point: “The immediate task is to take care of our countrymen who are negatively affected by China’s greedy occupation of our EEZ, not talking to the country that has caused the suffering.”)