Trillanes: Cayetano a snake, disregarding arbitral ruling

MANILA, Philippines — Opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV hit back yesterday at Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano, saying the official has done nothing to follow through on the country’s victory in its arbitration case against China over the West Philippine Sea.         

Trillanes was reacting to Cayetano’s statement last week that it was under the watch of the Aquino administration that the country lost control over Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal to China with the senator acting as negotiator to Beijing.

“Now the question to Cayetano and his boss, (President) Duterte, is this: why didn’t you follow through on our historic victory at the arbitrarion court? Or better yet: why aren’t you fighting for our sovereignty the way you promised during the campaign?” Trillanes said.

The senator defended his dealings with China as he was “officially designated as the backchannel negotiator” by then president Benigno Aquino III in May 2012 at the height of the so-called Panatag standoff, wherein about 80 to 100 Chinese vessels of various sizes were in and around the shoal.

He said Cayetano has “proven to be a political snake” as the so-called Panatag standoff happened when the country’s top diplomat was still a senator and loyal of the Aquino administration.

He said Cayetano defended his actions in the Senate and never saw anything wrong with how Aquino resolved the standoff then.

Trillanes said he gave several media interviews about the incident and “Cayetano never saw anything wrong with it then” but now is “pretending to be blind and deaf.”

“My mission, generally, was to deescalate the tension in the shoal. Specifically, it entailed the reduction of the number of Chinese ships in the area. The issue of sovereignty was not covered and was never discussed,” he said.

He said the negotiations lasted for three months, and he was able to deescalate the tension in the shoal with the withdrawal of all Chinese vessels except three, which were all positioned beyond the shoal.

“The refusal of China to remove the remaining three ships forced the hand of PNoy (Aquino’s nickname) to file the arbitration case, which we eventually won,” Trillanes said.

In July 2016, the arbitral tribunal junked the nine-dash line claim of China over almost the entire South China Sea.