Stirring up trouble

Route taken by Rody is the most pragmatic for the moment as it provided a respite to a possible serious confrontation.

President Rody Duterte’s detractors’ intentions were all too obvious in their push for another third-party arbitration in “enforcing” the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) award.

This was after Mr. Duterte raised the issue and was firmly rejected by his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing.

China had consistently made known its stand that it will not honor a ruling from an entity other than nations involved in the territorial conflicts in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

It is a total insult to anybody’s intelligence that a ruling by an arbitration body should be raised, this time for enforcement, with another multilateral body while one of the parties had made it clear that it would not recognize the process.

The yellow former Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario demanded that Rody seeks the help of the United Nations (UN) in enforcing the 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated the nine-dash line claim of China over nearly the entire disputed sea.

He even cited the urgency of preparing “a strategy for taking our case to the UN. It will take time and hard work, but we must do this for the sake of our many generations to come.”

He indicated the ruling that favored the country “is now an integral part of international law.”

The goal is to dilute Rody’s gains in his fifth state visit to China where more investments in local projects were pledged, including a steel mill that will have a total infusion of P200 billion when completed and more importantly, Xi’s commitment to speed up the creation of a binding Code of Conduct.

“This should have been the setting between the two presidents in Beijing. For the Philippines to have been asked to agree that it will not bring up the issue again is to effectively accept without equivocation that China is above the rule of law,” he pontificated.

Rody put forward the PCA ruling to Xi in a bilateral meeting which had a predictable result.

Del Rosario’s credibility is shot when it comes to the WPS since he is considered part of the problem as it was during his term that China was coaxed into aggressively asserting its claims in the sea conflict.

It all started when, seemingly showing off a new toy, Rody’s predecessor Noynoy Aquino sent the newly acquired Hamilton-class frigate of the Philippine Navy, BRP Gregorio del Pilar, to go after Chinese poachers.

China then matched the deployment with militia vessels and its Coast Guard that resulted in a standoff.

In one of the most classic blunders of the century, Noynoy heeded a United States directive for both countries to retreat from the area of the stalemate.

The Chinese never left and have constructed permanent structures since then, including an airfield.

“This would be so wrong. It would be a betrayal of the trust we have placed in our governance. We must convince our leadership that we need to strengthen our resolve, and not have it weakened,” Del Rosario lectured.

Del Rosario and Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio were part of the Philippine team that won the favorable PCA ruling and both are livid about Rody’s inroads through the diplomatic route.

The route taken by Rody is the most pragmatic for the moment as it provided a respite to a possible serious confrontation while cooperation has led to huge gains for the country’s development goals.

Confrontation fostered by Noynoy led to nothing but an unstable situation that affected not only the country but the entire region.

Del Rosario should shut up since he had his chance to address the China conundrum and he blew it.