Duterte ‘just joking’ in invoking defense pact with US amid maritime row, says Carpio

Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio believes President Rodrigo Duterte was "just joking" when he called on the United States (US) to confront China over expansive claim to the South China Sea.

Invoking the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the US, Duterte on Wednesday urged Washington to deploy the US Navy's 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, Japan, to the South China Sea.

The president said he will bring Carpio, former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, and former Foreign Affairs secretary Albert Del Rosario — prominent critics of his South China Sea policy — with him.

"I think the President is just joking, just like his jet ski joke," Carpio said in response, referring to Duterte's statement during the 2016 presidential campaign that he would ride a jet ski to Spratly Island and plant the Philippine flag there.

"The President knows that the Philippines can invoke the Phil-US Mutual Defense Treaty only if there is an armed attack on Philippine territory or Philippine military ships or aircraft. This has not happened," the senior magistrate said in a message to reporters.

He explained that the defense pact operates for self-defense and not for aggression against another state.

Carpio said a war of aggression is prohibited by the 1987 Constitution and the United Nations Charter and would make the leaders of an aggressor state liable for an international crime cognizable by the International Criminal Court.

Duterte has been criticized for setting aside an international tribunal's ruling invalidating China's massive claims in the South China Sea in pursuit of warmer relations with China. He has repeatedly said the Philippines cannot win a war.

Last week, Carpio said the claim that enforcing the 2016 arbitral award means going to war is "an utterly false claim designed to intimidate the Filipino people to submit to the will of China."

The senior justice said the Constitution renounces war as an instrument of national policy and that the United Nations charter has outlawed war as a resort to settle territorial or maritime disputes between states. —LDF, GMA News