Playing right into Uncle Sam's hand?

Posted on March 15, 2008 - Filed Under , , , |

LAW students, especially those studying international law, must now be finding the current issue on the Philippines' action in the Kalayaan Group of Isands or Spratlys a thrilling case for discussion.
Already, legal experts and luminaries have chimed in with their views on how defensible or indefensible the government's position is on the issue. It's a gem of a legal point and if pursued to its conclusion, perhaps, soon become a precedent in territorial and sovereignty jurisprudence once it reaches the Supreme Court like many people now predict it would.
Is it "treason," as insinuated strongly by some senators and opposition types or is it creative diplomacy as the Palace's legal beagles and secretaries – even including former Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr. who has some love lost with the Arroyo administration himself – strive to insist?
As everyone who bothers to read the newspapers knows by now, the joint "seismic survey" contract was signed on September 1, 2004 between China and the Philippines originally. When Vietnam, which also claims some islets and reefs in the disputed waters, balked over its being left out, the agreement was rewritten to become tripartite between the three nations and was signed on March 14, 2005.
According to Bernard Wain, a writer-resident in the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and a former editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, in an article written for the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), the Philippines, in effect, allowed to be included in this agreement parts of its own continental shelf that are not even being claimed by China or Vietnam. This, Arroyo critics proclaim, is an act of treason.
The President however defends it as a strictly commercial venture between the national oil companies of the three signatory-nations that does not change the sovereignty claims of the three countries. "It is a historic diplomatic breakthrough for peace and stability in the region." De Venecia, for his part, said government was simply taking a practical tact, turning the disputed territory "from an area of conflict into a zone of peace and cooperation."
Our humble take on this is: Some Mighty Sam is stage-managing the whole imbroglio. And everyone, administration and opposition, as skillfully managed by the Big Brother's Hand, is predictably getting into the act, the process now unraveling by itself and on its own momentum, to become yet another masterful manipulation of the Philippines' oft-mouthed passion for independence.
In our quest to defend sovereignty, we may be unknowingly subverting it – while a more cunning and selfish Pied Piper happily leaves the scene of a nation in tatters.  
  

 

 

 

Comments

Leave a Reply