Eight years after the Permanent Court of Arbitration handed the Philippines a sweeping legal victory over China in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) quietly struck a deal that undid much of what that ruling won.

Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, in an interview on DAILY TRIBUNE’s online show Straight Talk yesterday, called it what it was: a surrender dressed in diplomatic language.

The deal, reached in 2024, was what the DFA called a “provisional understanding.” It rested on three conditions.

The Philippines must give China prior notice before a resupply mission is undertaken to the grounded BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal. There must be prior consultation with China before the resupply vessel proceeds, and the China Coast Guard must inspect the vessel on site by reading its waterline.

A supply boat riding high in the water would suggest a light load and would be waved through. A boat riding low would suggest heavy construction materials on board and it would be blocked because China does not want the rusting Sierra Madre repaired or reinforced.

Carpio, the country’s foremost authority on the arbitral award, did not mince words about what this meant. “That has, in effect, diminished our sovereign rights,” he says. “We have agreed to give up our sovereign rights.”

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), he said any nation on earth can sail to Ayungin without having to get China’s permission, without having to declare its cargo because that is freedom of navigation in what is the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

“We cannot do that,” Carpio says. “And yet it is our own exclusive economic zone.”

The term “provisional understanding” itself offends him.

“What’s provisional? There cannot be an understanding because there is no agreement between China and the Philippines as to the meaning of that procedure.” He branded it “an oxymoron,” and argued that the agreement walks back what the country had already won.

The deal is also a misnomer since provisional arrangements should have been made before an arbitral award was issued, not eight years after it became final.

“The award was issued in 2016,” Carpio said. “Final. We tell the world it’s final. But eight years later, we agreed to enter into a provisional agreement... it’s already final. We’re going back.”

There’s more. Carpio is alarmed over the DFA’s apparent enthusiasm for expanding the arrangement across the entire WPS, including resupply missions to Pag-asa Island, which the Philippines already controls outright.

“Why do we agree that we cannot go to Pag-asa without prior notice to China... and we have to show them the cargo?” he asked.

The island has an airstrip under repair, school buildings under construction, even a church going up. All of that, in his reading, will become hostage to a Chinese sign-off under the new arrangement.

“The people in the DFA, they really don’t know what they’re doing. That’s the big problem,” he said.

The negotiators, Carpio noted, were then Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo and then Undersecretary Theresa Lazaro, who is now the secretary.

No signed document has been made public; the department described it only as a “statement of principles.” Carpio insisted DFA officials owed the public a look at the actual text.

Constitutionally, he argued, no foreign secretary has authority to surrender our sovereign rights—“it’s beyond his pay grade.” But international law does not care about that domestic limitation.

“When the foreign secretary enters into an agreement, even if it’s void under domestic law, it’s binding internationally,” Carpio stressed. He said such agreements were a privilege available only to the President and the foreign secretary.

He foresees China invoking the deal later as proof Manila consented to subordinate its rights, a form of acquiescence that could undercut the arbitral award itself in any future dispute.

What it will do is waive what the country is already entitled to under international law through a capitulation.