MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte will visit Pag-asa Island before his term ends to show the country’s claim to the Kalayaan Group of Islands, the Palace said on Friday, despite the chief executive’s failure to make good on promises related to the nation’s territory.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said the president would visit Pag-asa Island to see the situation of both Filipino soldiers stationed on the island and its residents.
Pag-asa Island is the Philippine-held feature in the Kalayaan Group of Islands in the disputed South China Sea.
“I think the time will really come that the president will visit Pag-asa Island,” Roque said in Filipino.
“His visit to Pag-asa is evidence of our sovereignty and if not today the president I think will do it before his term of office ends,” the president’s spokesman added.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Duterte bragged that he would ride a jet ski and go to a disputed island occupied by China in the West Philippine Sea to stake the country’s claim to the territory.
Analysts said this pronouncement was just pure bluster as the chief executive had tried to forge closer economic ties with Beijing to court Chinese money and investments into the country’s economy.
Then, in March, Duterte admitted that his pronouncement was indeed merely pure talk.
"When I said I would go to China on a jet ski, that's nonsense. I don't even have… It's just talk. I'm surprised you believed it," the firebrand Philippine leader said.
Several days ago, it was floated that Duterte would ride a jet ski to the Philippine Rise off the coast of Aurora.
The president was supposed to lead the commemoration rites of the first year of the renaming of the underwater plateau, which is part of the country’s extended continental shelf.
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However, Duterte did not push through with the plan and it was his son Sebastian Duterte and aide Christopher “Bong” Go who sailed in the waters off Aurora on a jet ski, a move described by critics as a publicity stunt.
The Palace tried to spin this and said that Duterte’s act would not have made any difference despite the jet ski stunt of his son and Go, who is reportedly eyeing a Senate seat.
Last year, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana visited the island together with top military officials to assert the country’s claim to the heart of the disputed area where China has already installed missiles and military-grade facilities.