The latest intrusion by Chinese ships into Philippine territory underscores anew the need for maintaining a balance of power in the West Philippine Sea, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said Monday.
Lacson, who heads the Senate’s defense committee, said that while the Philippines is “militarily weak” compared to China, it must establish stronger ties with its allies.
“The fact that we are a militarily weak country that cannot match China’s military power should compel us to resort to establishing stronger alliances not only with other Asia-Pacific neighbors like Australia and Japan and the other ASEAN countries, but our long-standing western allies like the US and Europe,” he said in a statement.
“Only through a clear message that the presence of ‘balance of power’ in the West Philippine Sea can help us in this regard,” he added.
Earlier, Lacson said the Filipino people should throw their support behind Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana’s stand in getting Chinese ships to leave the Julian Felipe Reef area.
He said this is not the first Chinese intrusion into Philippine territory, citing the Chinese occupation of Mischief Reef in 1994 to 1995; and Scarborough Shoal, which China cordoned off in 2012.
But while he said all these have legal basis under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the existing arbitral ruling in our favor, the sad reality is that the ruling is unenforceable.
“The situation is made worse when our country’s leaders and foreign policy decision makers resort to acquiesce bordering on implied derogation of our sovereignty,” he said.
In the meantime, Lacson lamented the Philippines continues to lose tens of billions of pesos a year in “stolen” aquatic resources, as well as the wanton destruction of corals within our Exclusive Economic Zone that threatens our food security.
Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)
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