At every turn it has taken, the state's approach to the maritime dispute over a shoal and its features —deemed either within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone or within the realm of China's historic rights — remains stuck in the limbo of meaningless utterances. The government has been ill-advised on whether to employ a military or diplomatic tact, solve the problem or find someone to blame, resort to statesmanship, or do a dirty demolition job.
The President himself has issued statements in the form of metaphors, viz: "Move the needle the other way." Literally, the long drawn-out Sino-Philippine geopolitical standoff is like searching for the needle in the haystack. China may even fear, that in desperation, the country will burn the entire haystack to find no needle, as it were.
As many scholars have long articulated, only "active consultation" may be considered the rallying point. This would require bringing all the core issues and concerns to the negotiating table — one on one, involving no other country, no other actors, save the heads of state themselves.
There could be a separate occasion for a unifying accord among neighboring states and US allies in order to achieve a kind of "regional consensus." It might not be important to do so if it would antagonize China all the more, if the desired effect is to cast China in a bad light on the world stage.
It has become crystal clear that even the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling rests on an ice floe, and the country cannot fully bank on it, much less consider it a legal ruling cast in stone.
International entities like the PCA cannot rise above its being a mere "soft power" and, in particular, without any moral suasion at all so far as Beijing is concerned.
For the longest time, what has been depicted on the viewing screen are "blurred" evidence or silhouettes of "tension at sea" between the "coast guards" of respective countries that have tended to present "uncommon happenings as common" and vice versa. When a foreign ship cruises past a naval or coast guard blockade, doesn't that suggest that coordination has failed?
Come now "planned trilateral patrols in the South China Sea" with the help of the US, Japan, and Australia couched as "naval cooperation" that could threaten China by force of arms. That is hardly a characteristic of a well laid-out paradigm shift, is it?
Even the matter of expelling Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian, owing to fresh acts of aggression against Philippine vessels, is certainly a move off the charts. Mainstream media has ill-defined the meaning of "shadowed," "dangerously maneuvered," or "rammed through." Will a China Coast Guard ship crash into an officially marked Philippine Navy or Coast Guard ship at sea – while all its officers and men are on board?
Did the government even consult some active or retired Philippine Navy captains formerly assigned to the area in dispute? The state should have also consulted the local government units within a significant radius of the disputed waters and designated a representative who could speak for their sectors.
Grossly lacking is this internal coordination so whatever paradigm shift the government might adopt will always be found wanting. Did the President have time for a sit-down conference with his top advisers like the presidential legal counsel, the executive secretary, the navy flag officer in command, the coast guard commandant?
Had there not been a prior off-radar review by the Supreme Court on a matter so crucial to sovereignty or territorial jurisdiction? If the Executive has excellent rapport with the Legislature, why must it exclude the Judiciary in a well-rounded tripartite approach?
Beyond stating, the matter of sovereignty of one is not the sovereignty of all. Mr. President, win China over, please.
