Goodbye, West Philippine Sea!

In a climate called community quarantine, when we are told (or virtually ordered) to stay home, we have seen an incredibly quick turn of events. We have witnessed how the coronavirus ended the lives of people in most forlorn ways and wrecked government programs. While social and political leaders, inexperienced in battling unseen enemies, attempt to restore order with models never before tested, the humming sound of many business activities has been put to a deathly stop. In malls, eerie silence reigns. Unimaginably, churches have Masses and other services in empty temples and for absent devotees. These scenes are never more clearly and dramatically manifested to me, an ordinary citizen, than the absence of the horrible traffic jams on our streets. Very few vehicles are on our roads.

True to the off-tangent nature of this column, let me say that amidst all these worldwide tumble, it seems to me that the hideous minds of greedy imperialist powers are never affected by the pandemic. They never stop, not perhaps even for a nanosecond, on their insatiable expansionist mentality, COVID-19 or no COVID-19. In fact, they take Machiavellian advantage of the horrific situation. I am referring to a most recent move of the People’s Republic of China. It reportedly created two new districts in Sansha City, the southernmost city of Hainan Province. The newly-created districts feature parts of the West Philippine Sea, apparently to include the Spratly Islands, Scarborough Shoal, and the Fiery Cross Reef. From this Chinese pronouncement, made against the ruling of the International Arbitral Tribunal upholding the rights of the Philippines, China has set a document, despite its utter illegality, with which to legitimize their unlawful annexation of portions of our sovereign territory.

We must remember that in 2016, the international tribunal virtually discarded the so-called nine-dash line and upheld our legal right over some parts of land mass in the West Philippine Sea. Unfortunately, President Rodrigo Duterte, in contrast to his personal venomous verbiage against the US, chose to be ominously silent. Upon the indistinct claim that we cannot assert the favorable decision against a superpower, Duterte sat on our legal victory. His political commitment that upon his election, he would ride on a jetski and shoot all Chinese standing on our islands was, after all, a false and fake campaign propaganda. It thus became conceivable that China must have thought that the presidential inaction was a signal for it to continue its occupancy of our land. Soon, the Chinese built military facilities on court-ruled Philippine territory.

While the president has remained mum on the recent Chinese move, the Department of Foreign Affairs has lodged a diplomatic protest. In international law, it’s the first legal step towards asserting a country’s right. Resolving a dispute short of war is a global mandate. Of course, a diplomatic protest is supposed to carry with it some degree of persuasion like military strength or transnational pressure. But, in this case, we expect that China considers this protest useless because we have no punch and to hide its expansionist orientation, it will only point to the supposed agreement to exploit jointly the natural resources that can be discovered in the area which our president and the Chinese leader forged! What a chicanery! It’s a deception only our chink-eyed neighbor can invent.

Are there ways to fight this expansionist virus? Yes, there are. But all available modes always emanate from the executive department. So, what’s next, Mr. President?