West Philippine Sea issue ‘haunts’ Delfin Lorenzana every day

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s issues with China over the West Philippine Sea remain a problem that haunts Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana every day. 

He said there is currently a stalemate on the matter of who occupies which island in the region, though President Duterte’s strategy of not provoking the Chinese appears to be the right decision. 

“China is on my mind every day because of what they are doing in the West Philippine Sea. I wish I could make it go away but they are not, even if we are going to show them our arbitral ruling document, that they have no business there, they will not even honor it. So that’s it,” he told ANC in an interview earlier this week.  

Lorenzana said the problem with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is that there is no solid stand or statement against China.

He said former foreign affairs secretary Albert del Rosario tried many times to have all claimant-countries issue one statement with regard to the sea dispute.

“He (Del Rosario) tried to get all to issue a statement but no, two countries are always resisting the overture of secretary Del Rosario so we don’t have any statement because there’s no solid statement,” he said.

Lorenzana said there are five claimants from ASEAN – Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Philippines – and if only these five countries will have one voice, “I think it will be strong enough.”

The defense chief, however, noted that freedom of navigation still exists in the West Philippine Sea as China does not prevent the Philippines from moving around.  

“We can go… to our islands scattered there in the Spratlys, outside our EEZ (exclusive economic zone), and we can resupply our people there anytime we want. We have ships going there, airplanes flying. They just challenge our airplanes but we reply back that we are flying over Philippine territory,” he said.

Lorenzana said Duterte’s decision not to confront China appears to be the correct strategy because China is really stronger and ready for anything. 

“We don’t have any force to confront them. What will I send there? A frigate with several cannons versus the better equipped – even their coast guards are better equipped than our Navy. Huge coast guard ships,” he said. 

Lorenzana said one of the more positive things about the issue for now is that former foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano had an agreement with the foreign minister of China that those already occupying islands in the West Philippine Sea “can just stay there and no one builds anything new.”

Cayetano resigned before filing his certificate of candidacy to run for Taguig representative. 

“Where you are, stay there. Nobody’s occupying new features. So we have nine islands occupied by our troops. So we are there, improving the islands, improving the runway in Pag-asa, it could be finished next year, cemented, so we can go there anytime we want,” he said.