Fickle and unrealistic

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March L. Fianza

What really brings American Vice President Kamala Harris to our shores comes as a brainteaser that prompts speculations more than an arranged meeting. It is a political act that has not been seen since the last visit of President Gerald R. Ford in Manila on December 6, 1975.
    Other US presidents namely; Dwight D. Eisenhower (June 14, 1960), Lyndon B. Johnson (October 24, 1966), and Richard M. Nixon (July 26, 1969) visited earlier to which it could be said that all those official or unofficial calls were for our advantage as a nation, but second only to their vested interests.
    What provoked this could be attributed to President Andres Bonifacio who was remembered on his 159th birthday last Wednesday, November 30. Some American presidents insist that they are friends to us and many nations. But they are opportunists too who owe their existence to past events.
    Before the Americans, Bonifacio was already against Spanish rule in Manila and the surrounding provinces. But political infighting between him and Emilio Aguinaldo led to his execution by the latter on May 10, 1897 at the young age of 33. He was executed after an unfair trial by a lopsided jury of his peers.
    Fast forward to the Spanish-American War that led to the 1898 Treaty of Paris that allowed Spain to cede its colonized territories, the Philippines was sold to the Americans for $20 million. Within a few months, the Philippine-American War broke out that resulted to the establishment of US military government control.
    In 1902, the Americans crafted the Philippine Bill which temporarily provided for the administration of the affairs of a civil government in the islands after American soldiers crushed a Filipino nationalist movement.
    In Baguio, the Americans implemented a charter that allowed privately-owned lands to be sold to businessmen from Manila. The rest is history and the Philippines to this day remains under the control of the American smooth operator even after the U.S. Congress recognized its independence in 1946.
    Two weeks ago, Malacanang welcomed VP Harris. In her dialog with our officials, it was never reported that they talked about the United Nations arbitral decision of a dispute between China and the Philippines that we supposedly won.
    I thought, VP Harris avoided such topic in order to stop the issue that it was in fact the USA that benefited more from the UN arbitral decision than the Philippines. Political analysts say the decision in 2016 had instead weakened the country’s sovereign claims in the South China Sea or West Philippine Sea.
    I remember reading somewhere that the arbitral ruling had declared maritime features in the Spratly area as mere rocks and not islands, following definitions in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
    That declaration means that the rocks belong to the sea but are not entitled to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Our foreign affairs officials did not tell the public about this. They suppressed the information because they knew that they failed in the diplomatic work that they had been through before 2016. Now they want us to go to war.
    Political analysts said the UN arbitral decision is fickle and cannot be executed because the arbitration case did not call for specific actions from China and does not have a corresponding enforcement mechanism.
    Then it weakened us because the issues of sovereignty were beyond the scope of the arbitral court, leaving the territorial claims unsettled. With that, China nor the Philippines has no clear ownership over the maritime features in the West Philippine Sea, including Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam who are also claiming parts of the territorial sea.
        Also, VP Harris and President Bongbong Marcos cannot discuss the issue by themselves because they are aware that other countries will protect their interests in global investments in relation to freedom of navigation.
Since none of the claimants around the area are entitled to an EEZ, then only the USA benefited from the arbitral decision, considering that it now has a wider area to navigate. The only way to go now is through mutual negotiations.