Peas in a pod

Peas in a pod | Daily Tribune

Not a month after then-Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said that allowing China into Benham or Philippine Rise “is more beneficial for the Philippines,” and the Chinese “researchers” gave Mandarin names to the marine features in the area.

In January 2018, Cayetano granted China access to the Rise, which is across from Isabela in the Pacific Ocean. It would have been impossible for the Chinese to draw an imaginary line there since they would have had to also declare the entire Philippines within their boundaries.

“Whether it’s protecting the environment or any sovereign rights, meaning economic rights, in Benham Rise, it’s more advantageous to us that there will be several researches done,” Cayetano said.

He reasoned that scientific research in Philippine waters was allowable as long as the requesting party complied with the requirement of letting “Filipino scientists on board the research vessel and for them to share the data that would be gathered.”

By February, however, Cayetano’s reasoning was demolished after it was discovered that China had acquired United Nations (UN) approval for the names it had given to the submarine features, which, based on the experience in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), was a method of ownership.

China claimed to have “discovered” three underwater features during a 2004 survey by the China Navy Hydrographic Office, which in 2014 submitted the names for the consideration of the International Hydrographic Organization, a UN body that documents and compiles names of underwater features.

The IHO approved the names proposed by China in 2017.

In 2017 also, then-President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order No. 25, renaming Benham to Philippine Rise.

The secretary said the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) protested China’s branding of the Philippine Rise features.

“We will not accept it; that’s why we used the word object and protest,” Cayetano said.

Up to now, the Chinese may be pinpointing undersea features in the country’s territorial waters using the Cayetano permit.

On the other side of the map, the destabilizer Antonio Trillanes IV, who was a frequent partner of Cayetano in demolition hearings at the Senate, was duped into allowing China to occupy Scarborough Shoal through a disastrous backchannel adventure.

The other day, the dope tried to wash his hands off the bungled undercover mission, claiming in a video that he had a license to deal, that he was designated by the late President Benigno Aquino III to be the country’s “backchannel negotiator,” to end the 2012 standoff at Scarborough Shoal.

Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile’s favorite fifth columnist claimed that his being a backchannel negotiator is a foreign policy tool of a country to resolve problems that cannot be resolved through the formal or front channel of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and “ is not illegal.”

What happened after the Trillanes escapade speaks for itself.

Chinese ships never left the disputed shoal, and permanent structures started to rise, which are now forward bases of the People’s Liberation Army.

Enrile, as a guest in a weekly briefing of former President Duterte to the nation during the pandemic, posed to Trillanes a simple query: How was Trillanes able to build a high-level network in China considering his past attempts to overthrow the government?

The Trillanes caper was uncovered when Enrile was still a member of the Senate, and at the time, he also asked how Trillanes was able to move in and out of China without his travels having an official record.

On the country’s eastern side, Cayetano allowed China to intrude into the Philippine Rise. At the same time, in the west, Trillanes bungled things, leading to the surrender of Scarborough Shoal to China.

The Philippines does not need an adversary when we have these two bumbling chaps throwing away the country’s territory.