President Rodrigo Duterte’s camp on Monday said his government did all it could to assert the country’s rights over China in the West Philippine Sea.
It has been five years since the Philippines won a landmark legal victory at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which rejected China’s excessive claims in the West Philippine Sea under its nine-dash-line policy based on historical records from the Ming Dynasty.
“We have done all that we could, given the absence of an enforcement mechanism under international law,” Palace spokesman Harry Roque said in a press briefing.
In July last year, Duterte said that he was not willing to go to war with China to claim the Philippines’ sovereignty in the heavily disputed South China Sea.
“We have to go to war. And I cannot afford it. Maybe some other president can but I cannot,” said Duterte, who during his presidential campaign promised to go to disputed waters on a jet ski and plant a Philippine flag to assert the country’s ownership of the waters.
“Inutil ako diyan and I’m willing to admit it. Talagang inutil ako diyan, walang magawa,” he added.
Duterte, who has been widely criticized for his lack of insistence on the country’s arbitral victory over China since assuming the presidency in 2016, would then assert the ruling during his first United Nations (UN) General Assembly appearance.
“The award is now part of international law, beyond compromise and beyond the reach of passing governments to dilute, diminish or abandon,” he declared during his first UN address.
“We firmly reject attempts to undermine it,” he added.
Duterte also asserted it in front of Southeast Asian leaders in an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit last year.
But in May this year, Duterte said he would throw away the country’s arbitral victory over China’s territorial claims on the West Philippine Sea as it was not set in stone—only in paper.
Duterte had told his Cabinet members to not be rude or disrespectful to China, to whom he said the Philippines was indebted for its vaccine donations.
China said it “neither accepts nor recognizes” the Philippines’ legal victory on South China Sea claims.
Roque also disputed claims that Filipino fishermen were being prevented by Chinese vessels from fishing in the Scarborough Shoal.
“Ako lang naman ang tumayong abogado ng mga mangingisda galing sa Masinloc, galing sa iba’t ibang bahagi po ng Pangasinan. At alam ko po, I have personal knowledge na halos lahat po sila ay nakabalik na sa kanilang hanapbuhay lalung-lalo na diyan po sa Borough ‘no. So I dispute that,” Roque said. John Ezekiel J. Hirro
