Marcos gives up what his father acquired in 1978 — for US' sake

[Lee]

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PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. last week signed into law the so-called Maritime Zones Act. The law effectively gives up the Kalayaan Island Group that his father in 1978 annexed out of the Spratlys Island Group and made part of the Philippines' sovereign territory.

The elder Marcos' one-man rule allowed him to issue in 1978 Presidential Decree 1596, which annexed a hexagon in the disputed Spratlys and called it the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG). The decree provided the precise geographic coordinates defining the hexagon, just as the 1898 Treaty of Paris defined the Philippine territory, unchallenged by any country.

Marcos Sr.'s decree did not declare sovereignty over each individual feature there, e.g., Pag-asa Island, etc., but over the entire area, including islands, reefs, seabed and its waters within the hexagon, and made it a municipality of Palawan. China and Vietnam's claims of sovereignty over the Spratlys — called Nánshā Qúndǎo by the former and Quần đảo Trường Sa by the latter — are similar but cruder since they didn't and haven't defined the baselines of these archipelagos they claim.

The Philippine Maritime Zones Act — filed in 2023 by such Senate luminaries as Ramon Revilla Jr., Jinggoy Estrada, JV Ejercito and its principal sponsor, Francis Tolentino — has relinquished this huge sovereign area, first through its "Section 6," which reads:

"Territorial Sea. The high-tide features covered by the Kalayaan Island Group in the West Philippine Sea shall have a territorial sea of twelve (12) nautical miles from its baselines as determined above."

"High-tide" features under the definition of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) are features that remain above water at high tide and are entitled to territorial waters and even exclusive economic zones. Out of the nine features in the Spratlys that the Philippines occupies, only four are high-tide elevations (Pag-asa, Parola, Likas and Lawak). The remaining four are low-tide features, which the Philippines and no other country can claim sovereignty over under Unclos.

 

 

The Act obviously but implicitly junks the strongman's definition of the KIG as our territory, which he treated as one territory rather than a collection of islands, reefs and other features. The new law provides that only if a feature is a high-tide elevation can it be a territory and, therefore, entitled to a territorial sea. Going by the new law's provisions, we lose four features we have occupied since the 1970s, since these are low tide features: Kota, Balagtas, Patag, Panata and Rizal reefs.

Under the Maritime Zones Act, only the four high-tide features in the Spratlys are declared as our territory. The area of their 12-nautical-mile territorial seas totals a tiny 6,192 square kilometers. This is just 4 percent of the 223,200 sq km area of the KIG (including its waters) under Marcos Sr.'s decree. The Philippine archipelago's area is 1.2 million sq km, which means that under the Act, we will be losing 20 percent of our sovereign area, roughly double the size of Luzon. This is such a colossal loss for the country.

China, on the other hand, has seven high-tide elevations, which were formerly reefs it built up from 2013 to 2014 (China's response to the filing of the arbitration suit) into huge artificial islands, now heavily fortified with military installations and infrastructure. The Philippines claims that these should be low-tide elevations, as these were before the Chinese built them up, as the 2016 arbitral ruling affirmed. But who would enforce such a view?

Vietnam, on the other hand, has eight high-tide elevations, many of which were similarly transformed into heavily fortified military installations.

The new law even refers to the "Kalayaan Island Group" only as the location of high-tide islands that the Philippines occupies, which it says are entitled to territorial seas. It does not refer to it, as the baselines law did, as a "regime of islands" that Unclos defines as a part of a country's territory.

Section 19 of the Act further confirms the fact that it is giving up our KIG under the elder Marcos' decree:

"SEC. 19. 'Repealing Clause.' Section 2 of Republic Act No. 3046, entitled 'An Act to Define the Baselines of the Territorial Sea of the Philippines' [is] hereby repealed."

Section 2 of the 2008 Baselines Law that the new law repealed reads: "Section 2. The baseline in the following areas over which the Philippines likewise exercises sovereignty and jurisdiction shall be determined as 'Regime of Islands' under the Republic of the Philippines consistent with Article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos): a) The Kalayaan Island Group as constituted under Presidential Decree No. 1596; and b) Bajo de Masinloc, also known as Scarborough Shoal."

This means that the new Maritime Zones Act is repealing the baseline law's assertion regarding the KIG and Bajo de Masinloc as a "Regime of Islands" in which the Philippines no longer exercises sovereignty and jurisdiction, as defined by that Unclos term. Our claim over these islands is degraded into sovereign rights, as it is purportedly part of its exclusive economic zones.

The new Marcos law's more categorical, unambiguous relinquishing of the KIG as part of our sovereign territory is contained in its Section 19, which says that "Hereby amended is Section 1 of Presidential Decree No. 1596 Declaring Certain Area Part of the Philippine Territory and Providing for Their Government and Administration." That Section of Marcos Sr.'s 1978 decree specified the precise location of the KIG that he created under that decree, in which everything in that hexagon was "subject to the sovereignty of the Philippines."

Did Junior know what he was signing into law, that he was relinquishing the KIG, which his father somewhat cleverly and boldly annexed in 1978 as part of the Philippines, correctly calculating at that time 46 years ago that China was too weak military and economically to resist his aggression, and that the US, which viewed China as an enemy, was behind him?

How could our purportedly patriotic Senate and Marcos give up so much of our territory? The answer is that the US fooled them, deliberately presenting a very wrong picture of Unclos (which the US hasn't even joined and which does not have an enforcement arm) and misinterpreting the 2016 arbitral award in the Philippines vs China case.

This new law is a mammoth betrayal of our country. It not only gives up 20 percent of our sovereign territory. It weakens our claims in the South China Sea as the law jettisons our claims of sovereignty and leaves us only inferior claims of sovereign rights over the disputed areas we claim are within our exclusive economic zone.

Other than demonizing China through that case, the US has another very strategic aim in getting the Philippines to give up its KIG. The US wants to reduce the territorial areas held by claimant countries in the South China Sea into areas of just 1,520 sq km, so tiny that the US Navy could easily sail through the South China Sea, sailing only through international waters in which they don't have to get permission from the sovereign. No wonder it applauded it as soon as it was passed.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2024/11/11/opinion/columns/marcos-gives-up-what-his-father-acquired-in-1978-for-us-sake/2001232

 

 

[BrettGC]

I hardly see it as a betrayal but a more conventional claim on territorial waters.  The massive downside is that it will probably embolden China in the region even more. 

[Joey G]

Ha… when I first saw the Header on this post I thought he was giving back all the money he got… duh, on my part 

[OnMyWay]

2 hours ago, Joey G said:

Ha… when I first saw the Header on this post I thought he was giving back all the money he got… duh, on my part 

Me too!

[BrettGC]

Guys, seriously?? 

[Mike J]

On 11/12/2024 at 5:49 AM, BrettGC said:

Guys, seriously?? 

What gold?  I don't have any gold.  What is gold anyway?