Carpio: Enrile in 1992 said Mutual Defense Treaty covered South China Sea

Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile on Monday contradicted a statement he made decades ago about Philippines-US Mutual Defense Treaty's applicability in conflicts that may arise in the South China Sea, retired Supreme Court Association Justice Antonio Carpio has said.

According to Carpio, Enrile in 1992 said that former US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance Jr.' s memo in 1979 meant that the MDT may be applied to the South China Sea, where the Philippines exclusive economic zone lies.

“Enrile said the other day that the MDT, which covers the Pacific theater, does not apply to the South China Sea,” Carpio said in a message sent to GMA News Online. It was the same statement he sent to an Ateneo Viber group.

“This contradicts his statement in 1992, published in Manila Bulletin, explaining that the 1979 Memo of Sec. Cyrus Vance means the MDT applies to the South China Sea,” he added.

Enrile on Monday appeared on President Rodrigo Duterte's weekly nighttime briefing usually reserved for issues on the country's COVID-19 response.

The former senator and defense minister under the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos backed Duterte's posture against antagonizing China despite its occupation of several features inside the Philippines EEZ.

Enrile said during the briefing that the US failed to compel China to follow the agreement it brokered in 2012 to defuse the tension in the Scarborough Shoal where a Philippine Navy vessel and several Chinese ships faced in a standoff.

Thus, when the Philippine forces left, the Chinese remained to take control of the area.

Enrile in the same briefing said that the MDT would not be triggered with a conflict in the South China Sea.

Enrile’s remarks in 1992 were also cited by Herman Kraft in his article titled “Philippine-US Security Relations in the Post-Bases Era” in July 1993.

“Representative Juan Ponce Enrile was Defense Minister of the Marcos cabinet and was a member of the Philippine delegation that discussed this issue with the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. in 1979,” the footnote read.

“He said that Secretary Vance had made it clear then that the South China Sea was construed to be part of the Pacific area, hence the U.S. obligation under the MDT to assist in defending the Philippines could be invoked. See Manila Bulletin, November 17, 1992, p. 25,” it added.

Detained Senator Leila De Lima also belied Enrile’s claims, saying that the treaty could also apply to attacks on the West Philippine Sea and not only the Pacific.

De Lima is a former secretary of justice under the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III.

Enrile on Monday claimed that the Philippines would "lose more" if it continued to antagonize China with the two countries' overlapping claims in the South China Sea. —NB, GMA News