What WPS sale, ship removal?

Former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV on Monday urged Senator Imee Marcos to conduct an inquiry into the backchannel negotiations he initiated with China in 2012 and the “gentleman’s agreement” between former President Rodrigo Duterte and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

Trillanes issued the challenge to Marcos, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), where he attached a video clarifying his role in the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff between the Philippines and China.

“Kindly watch this explainer to get a bit of background before speaking to the media,” Trillanes’ caption read, a seeming response to Marcos’ allegation that he was duped by China in 2012.

In the video, Trillanes said he was designated by then President Benigno Aquino III to be the country’s “backchannel negotiator” to de-escalate the tension in Scarborough Shoal.

“Just to be clear, being a backchannel negotiator is a foreign policy tool of a country to resolve problems that cannot be resolved by the formal or front channel of the Department of Foreign Affairs. This is not illegal,” he said.

Contrary to the claims of allies of former President Duterte, Trillanes said he did not sell the country’s territories to China. “Whatever the Duterte supporters are insinuating that I supposedly sold Scarborough, this is clearly fake news,” he said.

“First of all, a senator does not hold the title to Scarborough Shoal, so how could I sell it? If that were true, then there should have been a deed of sale or a document shown by Duterte because they had all the documents in Malacañang and the DFA,” he added.

Achievement

Trillanes emphasized that his role as the backchannel negotiator of the Aquino administration was his “biggest achievement,” as the number of Chinese ships at the shoal went down from 80 to 100 to only three.

Last week, Duterte’s former mouthpiece, Harry Roque, revealed that the former president had made a “gentleman’s agreement” with China to maintain the status quo in the West Philippine Sea.

Roque said the agreement was that the Chinese Coast Guard would not stop the deliveries to the country’s troops stationed on the BRP Sierra Madre as long as the supplies were limited to food and water.

Senator Marcos earlier defended the gentleman’s agreement between Duterte and China, saying that “it was the practical thing to do.”

“For me, the agreement to allow the Philippines to send food and other necessities to Filipinos there [BRP Sierra Madre] was practical,” she added. 

“The agreement of PRRD was okay. There was no treason. There was no giving up of sovereign rights. They just agreed to allow the delivery of supplies peacefully,” she said.

In a phone interview, Roque told DAILY TRIBUNE the removal of the BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin Shoal was not part of Duterte’s agreement with China.

In August last year, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the Philippines had no deal with China to remove the Sierra Madre from Ayungin Shoal. Marcos said he would rescind it should such an agreement exist.

“I’m not aware of any such arrangement or agreement that the Philippines will remove from its own territory its own ship, in this case, the BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin Shoal,” he said.

“And let me go further, if there does exist such an agreement, I rescind that agreement as of now,” the President added.

Kowtowed

Senate Deputy Minority Leader Risa Hontiveros said that Duterte when he was president had always pandered to China’s wishes.

“Roque’s revelations are not all that surprising. Duterte always kowtowed to Beijing, putting his relationship with China first before our national interest,” she said. “That much was clear during his presidency.”

Hontiveros said Duterte never recognized the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that affirmed the Philippines’ territorial rights in the WPS or shot down China’s claim to nearly the entire South China Sea.

As the two bodies of water overlap, so do the territorial claims of the Philippines and China.