Senate approves baselines bill on 2nd reading

MANILA, Philippines -The Senate on Tuesday afternoon approved on second reading the 2009 baselines bill sponsored on the floor by Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago. Senate Bill 2699 excludes the contested land territories Scarborough Shoal and Kalayaan Island Groups from the Philippine's archipelagic baselines. They would instead be treated under the “regime of islands.” In her sponsorship speech, Santiago, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said the decision was made to avoid incurring the ire and possible retribution of other claimants of the contested lands. She said the very core of the bill is that it rejects moves to include the contested islands in drawing up the country's baselines. "Otherwise, the bill would not only be useless but also harmful because we would incur the unnecessary ire and possible retribution of our neighbor states, who are also claimants," Santiago said. She added that the "regime of islands" principle that was adopted by the bill sufficiently protects the Philippines’ claim over the contested islands. Under the said principle, each island is entitled to claim its own territorial sea, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf and not enclosed within the archipelagic baseline. She said that if the contested Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal will be enclosed within the country's archipelagic baselines, "we achieve nothing because no domestic law has the power to override international law." "Our law might be upheld by the Philippine Supreme Court but it will certainly be rejected by an international court or tribunal," Santiago said. She said the Philippines is constrained to observe the "regime of islands" principle with respect to Spratlys because it is a subject of conflicting territorial claims by several Asian countries. She noted that the basic source of conflict is the expectation that underneath the Spratlys seabed lie some 200 barrels of oil, natural gas, minerals, and poly-metals such as gold, silver, iron and nickel. Santiago said in the 1990s, Philippines, China and Vietnam had near skirmishes around Mischief Reef. To avert a military crisis, the Philippines, Brunei-Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand signed the Asean Declaration on the South China Sea urging parties to resolve all sovereignty and jurisdictional issues by peaceful means. The senator said the bill adopted the "regime of islands" principle because of its advantage of avoiding conflicting base points with other claimants to the Spratlys. "Conflicting base points is the reason why your committee decided not to adopt other bills. The committee takes the view that if a modern baselines bill includes conflicting base points with other claimant states, this would certainly be a source of diplomatic strain with such states as China, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan," Santiago said. She also said that the "regime of islands” principle increases the size of the country's archipelagic water and exclusive economic zone by 76, 518 nautical miles. She said the Congress needs to immediately pass the bill to meet the May 13 deadline set by the United Nations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (Unclos). - GMANews.TV