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Supreme Court upholds PHL 2009 Baselines Law


(Updated 10:28 p.m.) The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of the Philippine Archipelagic Baselines Law, which critics claimed “weakens" the country’s territorial claim to parts of the contested Spratly Islands.

In an en banc session, the magistrates struck down for lack of merit the petition of University of the Philippines (UP) professors and international law experts Merlin Magallona and Harry Roque Jr. opposing Republic Act 9522 — signed in 2009.

According to highly placed sources, the justices came up with a “unanimous" vote in favor of the previous administration. The decision was penned by Justice Antonio Carpio and as of this posting is still being circulated to the other magistrates for their signatures.

In their petition filed on April 1, 2009, Magallona and Roque said the Baselines Law reclassified into mere “regimes of islands" the Kalayaan Group of Islands and the Scarborough Shoal, which form part of the heavily disputed Spratly Islands in the West Philippine Sea (also known as South China Sea).

The Supreme Court upheld RA 9522 which includes the "Regime of Islands" shown here with the baselines (appearing as blue lines). The black lines show the 1898 Treaty of Paris limits which petitioners Magallona and Roque had insisted should have been the basis of determining the internal waters of the Philippines. Source: National Mapping and Resource Information Authority

Apart from the Philippines, other countries laying claim in whole or in part to the group of islands – said to be rich in natural gas and oil – are China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Taiwan.

Saying it redefined the country’s internal waters into “archipelagical waters," the petitioners said the law practically gives foreign ships the full freedom to pass through Philippine waters and foreign aircrafts to freely fly over the country as long as in a “continuous, expeditious, and unobstructed manner."

Boundaries changed, ecological impact

The Baselines Law also changed the boundaries of Philippine territory from a rectangular-shaped one that is 600 by 1,200 nautical miles to a triangular one, leaving out around 15,000 nautical square miles of Philippine territory, Roque and Magallona added.

The petitioners also raised concerns about the ecological impact of the Baselines Law once it allows foreign vessels — even those that could possibly be containing nuclear substances — to pass through Philippine territory.

With these arguments, the petitioners asked the high court to issue either a preliminary prohibitory injunction or a temporary restraining order against implementing the law.

The magistrates however sided with Office of the Solicitor General in saying that the Baselines Law does not change the Philippine archipelago as defined in the Philippine Constitution. The high court also said the issuance of a TRO would already be too late since the law has already been forwarded to the United Nations.

The Baselines Law was passed to beat the deadline of the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). Under the UNCLOS, a country's 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is determined to extend outward from that country's baselines.

Several months back, the Philippines and China engaged in a territorial spat over the Spratly Islands, following incidents of Chinese vessels shooing Philippine oil exploration ships away from maritime areas west of the Palawan province. The Chinese government, though denying the incidents, maintained it would continue observing its sovereignty over the contested territories in the West Philippines Sea. — MRT/VS, GMA News

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