China’s incursion a ‘winning’ election issue

By Herbert Vego

FOR his incessant hits against China’s incursions at the West Philippine Sea, former Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio has earned critics who think he is thinking of running for a national office in 2022.

That seems tenable, considering that Carpio disdains President Rodrigo Duterte’s pivot to China.

But Carpio, even during the presidency of the late Benigno Simeon III, had been lashing against China for forcibly taking over Scarborough Shoal in 2012. The rock island, 124 nautical miles west of Zambales, is believed to be “hiding” rich natural resources, including oil and gas.

Any island within 200 nautical miles off the coastal area of the Philippines is part of our exclusive economic zone (EEZ). It’s in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), ratified by 167 states, including China.

A TV coverage by BBC alleged that there could be as much as 23 billion barrels of oil and 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the waters around the shoal.

In 2015, the Department of Foreign Affairs sponsored Carpio on a world lecture tour on the South China Sea dispute. Carpio presented the Philippines’ historical and legal case on the dispute before think tanks and universities in 30 cities of 17 countries.

Carpio had led the Philippine legal team in lodging a case against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands in 2012.

On July 12, 2016,  the arbitral court invalidated Beijing’s nine-dash line claim over the contested waters. China refused to acknowledge the arbitral ruling.

President Rodrigo Duterte, however, set the decision aside as he distanced the Philippines from its traditional ally, the United States, and embraced China while seeking financial and military aid.

He would not want to drive away Chinese fishermen from Philippine waters because of a supposed agreement between him and Chinese President Xi Jinping to allow fishing rights for both their peoples.

No wonder Carpio always goes ballistic in condemning China for tolerating Chinese fishing boats to fish at the Julian Felipe Reef at the Spratlys, 200 nautical miles from Palawan.

The Philippine government’s failure to hold her accountable for the June 9, 2019 “bullying incident” must have emboldened China. It was about 22 Filipino fishermen who nearly drowned when their fishing vessel was rammed by a bigger Chinese boat.

Carpio was the only Supreme Court magistrate during both the Aquino and Duterte administrations who openly denounced Chinese adventurism in our territories.

“We’re the owners of the resources there,” Carpio lamented before the world media. “There is no legal dispute as to the ownership of oil, fish, and gas. It belongs exclusively to the Philippines. The only problem is how to get China to comply.”

One recalls that when the then United States’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Manila on February 28, 2019, he reminded President Duterte that any armed attack on Philippine forces would activate the Mutual Defense Treaty (MTD) of 1951, which would alert both parties to act against an armed attack in the Pacific area.

An updated version of the MTD emerged in the form of Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), a ten-year agreement signed by then US Ambassador Philip Goldberg and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin during the meeting in Manila between then Presidents Barack Obama and Benigno Simeon Aquino in April 2014. It was, and still is, aimed at giving the U.S military greater access to Philippine bases as deterrent to “bullying” by foreign powers.

By the time succeeding US President Donald Trump visited the Philippines in November 2017, Duterte had replaced President Aquino. While he must have become familiar with Duterte’s pro-China pronouncements, Trump nevertheless assured his host, “We have a very, very strong relationship with the Philippines, which is really important — less so for trade, in this case, than for military purposes.”

Incumbent US President Joe Biden, like Obama, has stressed adherence to international rules and norms in the area of international disputes. When news broke out in March that 220 Chinese vessels had anchored at the Julian Felipe Reef, he authorized the immediate deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and missile cruisers within the vicinity.

That could have been one of the reasons why, during last Thursday’s 100th-anniversary celebration of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s President Xi Jinping turned the tables on “anyone” who would bully them.

“Anyone who dares try to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” he said before an audience of 70,000 gathered at Tiananmen Square.

The West Philippine Sea issue will certainly morph into an election issue in the run-up to May 9, 2022 presidential election.  Even if the US government would keep its hands-off, the Filipino voters would most likely favor a candidate who would condemn China in thought, in words and in deeds.

Going back to Antonio Carpio, he is one of the founders of 1Sambayan, which prides itself as an opposition coalition that would field national candidates against the administration’s. But he seems uninterested in becoming one. I guess he is inclined to endorse Vice President Leni Robredo for President.

Finally, however, just a wild pun:  If presidential daughter Sara Duterte Carpio runs for President, would an Antonio Carpio be an interesting match?