Con-com subpanel wants ‘constitutional status’ for PHL win in sea dispute vs. China

A subcommittee of the consultative committee (Con-com) formed by President Rodrigo Duterte to review the 1987 Constitution proposes to grant "constitutional status" to the Philippines' international court victory in connection with the West Philippine Sea issue in an envisioned federal charter.

The Con-com's subcommittee on the country's national territory has agreed to "expand" Article 1 of the 1987 Constitution to include the concept of sovereign rights, said panel member Fr. Ranhilio Aquino.

"It gives constitutional status to the arbitral judgment. After all, it was a judgment that declared that we had certain rights that could not be trespassed," Aquino said at a press briefing.

"We're obligating the government also to assert our sovereign rights," he also said.  

The existing Article 1, named "National Territory," reads thus: "The national territory comprises the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters embraced therein, and all other territories over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction, consisting of its terrestrial, fluvial, and aerial domains, including its territorial sea, the seabed, the subsoil, the insular shelves, and other submarine areas. The waters around, between, and connecting the islands of the archipelago, regardless of their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the Philippines."

Under the proposal of the subcommittee, the article will be divided into two sections and shall be named "Sovereignty Over Territory and Sovereign Rights," and shall read thus:

"Section 1. The Philippines has sovereignty over its territory, consisting of the islands and waters encompassed by its archipelagic baselines, its territorial sea and its airspace.  It has sovereignty over islands and features outside its archipelagic baselines pursuant to the laws of the federal republic, the law of nations and the judgments of competent international courts OR tribunals. It likewise has sovereignty over all the other territories belonging to the Philippines by historic right or legal title.

"Section 2: The Philippines has sovereign rights over that maritime expanse beyond its territorial sea to the extent reserved to it by international law, as well as over its extended continental shelf including the Philippine (Benham) Rise. Its citizens shall enjoy the right to all resources to which they are entitled by historic right."

This proposal puts the Philippine Charter within the framework of international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Aquino said.

The subcommittee's proposal may also bolster the country's claim on Sabah, he added. 

It was the issue of whether or not the Philippines' rights to its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) under the UNCLOS were violated by China that the Permanent Court of Arbitration issued a landmark ruling on in 2016.

This decision was favorable to the Philippines as the Court found "no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line’."

Aquino said the subcommittee will ask feedback from the Department of Foreign Affairs regarding the proposed provision but that any amendment to the panel's existing recommendation will be decided upon by the panel itself. —KBK, GMA News