Palace claim that PHL started militarization of West PHL Sea 'preposterous' —maritime expert

Malacañang's claim that the previous administration — and not China — started the militarization of the West Philippine Sea is "preposterous," lawyer Jay Batongbacal, a maritime expert, said on Monday.

Batongbacal was reacting to presidential spokesperson Harry Roque's claim that former President Benigno Aquino III started the militarization of West Philippine Sea when he deployed the country's largest warship to arrest Chinese poachers in 2012.

"That's preposterous. Harry Roque seems to forget that, in the Philippines, it's the Philippine Navy that has the primary mandate for fishery law enforcement," Batongbacal, director of UP's Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, said at a foreign policy forum in Manila.

Under laws of the Philippine Navy, the law enforcement powers for the maritime sphere of the Philippine Coast Guard and Philippine National Police are deputized or supporting powers to the Navy primary mandate of maintaining maritime security.

"The Philippine Coast Guard used to be attached to the Philippine Navy, and the Philippine National Police maritime group was only created when the new Philippine National Police itself was formed," Batongbacal said.

Batongbacal said China building military bases with offensive, war-making capabilities on the Spratly Islands was different from the defensive outposts built by the Philippines and Vietnam.

"Whereas prior to China, all of the facilities there whether it's the Philippines' or Vietnamese, they only had defensive capabilities only that which can defend the islands from invasion, and that's it," he said.

"They never had any offensive capability. This is completely different from what China has done, which is to create military bases with anti-aircraft, anti-ship capabilities that reach up all the way into the Sulu Sea and can host aircraft that can go so far as Surigao and Batanes."

China as the aggressor

Acting Chief Justice Antonio Tirol Carpio, one of the country's foremost experts on the West Philippine Sea issue, said China has always been an aggressor from a historical perspective, citing moments where the state attempted to seize control of various disputed islands in the South China Sea over the past decades.

"If you look at it in a historical perspective, we did not start in 2012 when the Scarborough incident happened. If you look back, China's always been the aggressor, it has always invaded in a creeping manner, the islands and rocks in the South China Sea," Carpio said.

Even in the Scarborough incident, he said China's navy ships were "just over the horizon ready to assist" the coast guard vessels it sent to confront the Philippines' flagship, which was smaller than any of Beijing's ships.

"It was an ex-Coast Guard vessel. It's smaller than the Coast Guard vessels of China. It was not even armed, there's no missile there, the Coast Guard vessels of China have missiles," Carpio said.

"It so happened that we did not have enough Coast Guard vessels. Besides, it's in our territory. Scarborough Shoal is part of the Philippine territory, and the waters outside the territory are part of our EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone). We have a right to be there." —KBK, GMA News