President Rodrigo Duterte’s consistent pathetic and unpatriotic response to China’s militarization in the West Philippine Sea is perplexing even as it is suspicious.
After an arbitral award by the United Nations-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration on 12 July 2016 confirming the Philippines’ sovereignty over most of the disputed areas in the West Philippine Sea, President Duterte:
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Refused to even discuss the award with the Chinese government;
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Was stalled to submission when the Chinese President Xi Jinping allegedly threatened that China would go to war against the Philippines if there was insistence on implementing the award, which is uncorroborated and unconfirmed;
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Insisted that China, as a “new found friend”, has promised to protect the Philippines despite its installation of missiles in three reefs in the Spratly Islands; and
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Said that a diplomatic protest against the aforesaid missile installation and the landing of long-range bombers in the Paracel Group of Islands will spell trouble for the Philippines which does not have the military muscle to buttress its protest.
With an expansionist aggressor at our very doorstep, Duterte is acting timid and unperturbed as if indeed the Philippines has already been annexed as a province of China.
The Duterte government cannot adopt a posture of helplessness even as viable remedies are available like a strong diplomatic protest, invocation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and enforcement of United Nations sanctions.
EDCEL C. LAGMAN