Excluded

In a few years, China and Vietnam will likely be exploiting the oil and gas resources, possibly in collaboration under the aegis of shared benefit from whatev-er resources the South China Sea may offer.

The Philippines will be excluded from this bonanza. The Supreme Court ruling declaring unconstitutional the Joint Seismic Exploration arrangement earlier concluded with China and Vietnam excludes us from the game. At the very least, this leaves our government very little elbow room to enter into a collabora-tive effort with our neighbors.

Although the results of the Court’s vote was announced, the actual decision has yet to be released. Constitutional experts are awaiting the release of the ruling, aching to study the text closely. The Solicitor General awaits release of that decision that should trigger a Motion for Reconsideration. Considering the large majority of magistrates voting for the ruling, this could be a long shot.

If the ruling stands, our future prosperity is compromised. By some estimates, the natural gas deposits beneath the South China Sea could be at least as large as what Saudi Arabia has. We direly need that for our energy needs – and therefore our economy’s progress.

I have talked to a few lawyers who have an inkling about what led to the Supreme Court’s possibly supremely disastrous ruling. They point out two possible infirmities in the decision.

The first involves collapsing “sovereignty” and “sovereign rights” into one and the same concept. Sovereignty is a familiar concept. Sovereign rights is a phrase that occurs only in the language of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It is an ill-defined concept. But it is certainly something in-ferior to sovereignty.

By the terms of the UNCLOS, the Philippines enjoys sovereignty over its internal waters defined by the archipelagic doctrine and our own baselines law. We do not have sovereignty over the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. What we have are sovereign rights. One is not the other. Only merchants of jingoism conflate sovereignty and sovereign rights.

While China is a signatory to the UNCLOS, they are not inclined to be bound by whatever hair-splitting we might want to engage in over the distinction be-tween sovereignty and sovereign rights.

The second infirmity involves the definition of our territorial waters. Some of the possible exploration sites lie in our exclusive economic zone but beyond our territorial waters as defined by the Treaty of Paris as well as by our Baselines Law that we submitted to the UN.

Other possible exploration sites lie beyond anyone’s exclusive economic zone. They are in that area our earlier foreign policy delineated for potential “com-mon benefit” of countries surrounding this sea. Whatever resources they hold will be shared by the contiguous countries.
If these areas are beyond our territorial waters, then they are beyond the coverage of our constitutional inhibitions. Our Constitution covers only areas over which the

Philippine state exercises sovereignty.

The Supreme Court ruling overextends, applying constitutional restrictions over areas outside our baselines. That strikes a non-lawyer like me as patently anomalous.

Obsolete

President Marcos Jr. clarifies that his administration is not seeking the privatization of the assets of the NAIA. What is possible, he says, is cutting a service contract for the management of air services so that the facility could accommodate more flights.
That begs the question: How many more flights can we accommodate with the limited runway space of the NAIA?

As air travel booms, how many more flights will we need to accommodate in the near future? How many can be accommodated without compromising pas-senger safety (and sanity)?

It seems to me that thinking in terms of increasing plane movements in this congested airport is like moving chairs around the deck of the Titanic as it sinks. It does not address the most basic fact about this facility: it is utterly obsolete.

I am old enough to remember Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak airport where planes had to navigate perilously between high rise condominium buildings. The last British governor-general of Hong Kong, rather than surrender the territory’s funds to China upon the colony’s turnover, decided it was best to invest in build-ing a new airport. Beijing frowned on the idea. On hindsight, that was the best decision ever made to ensure Hong Kong’s continued prosperity in the age of jet travel.

Fortunately, we have an option in the New Manila International Airport (NMIA) currently rising from the marshes in nearby Bulacan. The new airport will have at least six runways and a terminal that can handle millions of passengers a year.

The new airport facility being built by San Miguel will be a complete air hub, with enough space for aircraft servicing and a high-tech industrial zone that could host $200 billion in manufacturing investments. It will be served by a rail link (LRT-7) as well as an expressway.

The NMIA is the outcome of an unsolicited proposal submitted by San Miguel that had to go through many years in the bureaucratic wringer. Given the in-herent (and incurable) limits of the NAIA, the NMIA is testimony to the far-sightedness of the private sector compared to the short-sightedness of our bureau-cracy.

In a  few years, the NMIA will be serviceable. It will offer lower rates that the NAIA cannot offer – especially if it will need a service contract to manage flights. This is a gift to the nation.