By LauroL.Baja, Jr., VERA Files
Be that as it may, we should accept and support the wisdom and circumstances which led the Philippines to file the case with the Arbitral Tribunal. Views on why only now, why the Arbitral Tribunal, and why file it all, should now focus on how best to contend with China’s possible defense that the dispute is subject to its reservations.
That we filed the case is not yet an achievement and we should be fully prepared and persevere just in case proceedings start.
China reiterated its earlier denunciation of the Philippines’ “illegal occupation” of some islands in the South China Sea, referred to in the Philippines as “West Philippine Sea.”
Sources with contact in Beijing said China’s Foreign Ministry was “stunned” that the Philippines pushed through what they have been talking about for almost two years now.
by Tessa Jamandre Three months after three other countries formally submitted to the United Nations their claims over the disputed Kalayaan Island Group (KIG), the…
VERA Files started with Spratlys, baseline and extended continental shelf. One year after, it’s again Spratlys, baseline and extended continental shelf.
On March 25 last year VERA Files came out with a two-part special report on the government’s scrambling to meet the deadline set by the United Nations for the submission of the Philippine claim of its extended continental shelf, the underwater extension of the land.
The deadline set by the Convention of the Law of the Sea, which the Philippines ratified 24 years ago, for coastal states to declare their extended continental shelf is May 13, 2009.
by Tessa Jamandre VERA Files International law and constitutional law experts are set to ask the Supreme Court on Wednesday to nullify the three-week-old Archipelagic…
Related story: China sends large patrol boat to Spratly islands
by Tessa Jamandre
VERA Files
The Philippines will soon initiate border talks with its neighbors and finally confront territorial issues it has long avoided, the most contentious being the dispute with Malaysia over Sabah, now that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has signed the Philippine Archipelagic Baseline Law.
The Baseline Law defines the limits of Philippine territory. It is these limits that will determine the country’s extended continental shelf, which is believed to contain substantial amounts of oil, natural gas, minerals and polymetals.
The Philippines has less than two months to beat the May 13, 2009 deadline for the submission of its claim over the extended continental shelf before the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). The UN body, however, will not rule on a claim if it involves disputed territory.
When Gloria Arroyo’s “special envoys” to Malaysia, minus National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, met with Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, did they also discuss Sabah?
I’m curious because last Aug. 20, two weeks after the aborted signing of the Malaysian-brokered Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita issued Memorandum Circular 612 titled “Guidelines on Matters Pertaining to North Borneo (Sabah)”
The memo gives four instructions: