SEN. Aquilino Pimentel III on Sunday signaled Senate support for a heftier outlay for the Armed Forces modernization, particularly naval and air assets to better patrol the West Philippine Sea, in the next budget round starting July.
“Hopefully, the entire legislature will be able to support them,” Pimentel III said in a radio interview. The lawmaker was referring to pending requests for the defense and security cluster to be able to acquire more and better boats and planes to guard the Philippine coastline, especially in the country’s 200-nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which China’s maritime militia vessels have been intruding the past months.
“In the next [budget] round, we are conscious that this is a priority,” Pimentel III added, partly in Filipino, He called out those who in the past had quickly slapped down the AFP’s requests for support with the argument that the country has “other priorities.”
The Senator emphasized that political will should be mustered to give the Department of National Defense (DND) enough support so it can provide credible defense in asserting the Philippines’s sovereign rights as it comes under continuing challenge from China.
Pimentel III, who chairs the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is correct in saying that amid the brouhaha over President Duterte’s recent comments on the weight of the 2016 arbitral ruling favoring Manila, “what matters most is what the President said before the community of nations” at the UN General Assembly.
The President’s message had three key points, as reiterated time and again by DFA: “we are in possession of a [favorable] ruling; we will not let go of this ruling; and, we will enforce this ruling.”
The administration Senator noted that the July 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration upheld the Philippines’s rights over its exclusive economic zone under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and shot down China’s so-called “historic” claim over almost the entire South China Sea with its nine-dash-line invention.
The ruling “clarified the issue of maritime features in the SCS and how the Unclos applies.” But, he said, the arbitral tribunal “has no sheriff” that it can direct to enforce the ruling and “there is no motion for execution at the international level.”
It is up to the Philippines, Pimentel added, to preserve its rights as cemented by the ruling, by a menu of options, including ramping up its naval and air patrols and collaborating with allies who have signified their intent to help keep the peace in this part of the world.
“So now, we see an increase in the assets for patrolling,” Pimentel noted, because the ruling puts the burden on enforcement on the Philippines: “dapat i-patrol mo ang EEZ mo [you should patrol or guard your EEZ].”
Besides, the Senator stressed, “[based on] international rules, dapat may respeto sa isa’t isa [there should be mutual respect] because we are equal sovereigns,” and the Philippines’s tack is along these lines.
The DFA, through Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. consistently files note verbales to protest China’s continuing presence within the Philippine EEZ while Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana keeps telling China to pull out its maritime militia boats while ordering continued patrols.
Last week, the Coast Guard confronted Chinese vessels off Palawan and told them to leave.
The chief of the Senate foreign relations committee said this approach by the government—with two of the President’s alter egos, Locsin and Lorenzana, leading the moves—should suffice for now. And this is why he weighed in last week against persistent calls by the President’s critics to have him engage former Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio in a debate, Pimentel added.
He emphasized that the focus of everyone is on asserting at all times the Philippines’s prerogatives as established in the arbitral ruling. Pimentel noted that within its EEZ, other countries may pass but are barred from economic activity or any measure “they may profit from in our water column and continental shelf.”
This includes, he said by way of example,” fishing in our water column and drilling for oil, gas or precious metals in our continental shelf” without Philippine consent.