The Marcoleta Fallacy

Sen. Rodante Marcoleta’s demand for “metes and bounds” of the West Philippine Sea sounds practical until you remember what an exclusive economic zone actually is.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an EEZ is not a fenced rectangle you draw first and defend later.

It is a 200-nautical-mile entitlement measured outward from legally established baselines, and that measurement is the point.

That is why the Philippines passed Republic Act 9522 in 2009: to set archipelagic baselines with precise coordinates, because baselines are where the math begins.

When Marcoleta says he “would like to believe” there has been no specific computation or coordinates, he is treating the EEZ like a land title that needs corner monuments before you can complain about trespass.

It is the reverse in maritime law, where baselines come first, and the zones flow from them as a rule, not a suggestion.

Republic Act 12064, the Philippine Maritime Zones Act, spells this out again by defining the EEZ as extending up to 200 nautical miles from the baselines in line with UNCLOS.

So the “we cannot defend what we cannot define” line is not diligence.

It is a legal fallacy that risks invalidating our own statutes in the public mind, which is exactly where information warfare wants us.

The double standard is hard to miss.

China’s nine-dash line has been famous precisely because it is elastic and ambiguous, yet it is enforced with brute confidence.

Meanwhile, the world’s most important legal fact remains that the 2016 arbitral tribunal found there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within areas covered by that line.

Sen. Francis Pangilinan was right to ask on the floor whether we are now implying the ruling was erroneous and should be set aside, because that is where this kind of argument naturally drifts.

Even if Marcoleta’s intent is “just” technical clarity, the effect is political, because it signals uncertainty about a victory we already struggle to enforce.

It also mirrors a familiar disinformation script online: “no exact coordinates, therefore no claim,” a neat little trap that substitutes jargon for surrender.

And while the Senate debates whether a cay is at nautical mile 199 or 201, China continues to create facts at sea through pressure, harassment, and physical presence.

This is where “paralysis by analysis” becomes dangerous, because a perfect map is not what deters coercion.

Presence, consistency, and unified messaging do.

The fix is not to ban debate, because democracy includes messy arguments, as Malacañang correctly noted.

The fix is to professionalize it.

Senate leadership should require a closed-door technical briefing before floor debates on maritime law, with resource persons from the Office of the Solicitor General, DFA, NAMRIA, and the Philippine Coast Guard, so members do not improvise doctrine in public.

They should also produce a short, plain-language explainer, in Filipino and English, that distinguishes names like “West Philippine Sea” from the legal machinery of baselines and zones, because confusion is now a national security vulnerability.

Finally, lawmakers who want to argue about Kalayaan’s outliers should do it the right way, through legislation and strategy, not by casting doubt on UNCLOS geometry or the arbitral win.

We do not need a fence to know the yard is ours.