Nene lifts House baselines bill

MANILA, Philippines – Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. has lifted the bill filed in the House of Representatives defining the country’s new archipelagic baselines to speed up its passage in time for the May 2009 deadline set by the United Nations for the country to submit its territorial boundaries.

However, Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago has objected to House Bill 3216 of Cebu Rep. Antonio Cuenco that has been adopted by Pimentel in toto as this would declare the Philippines as an archipelagic state, which would reduce rather than extend the country’s territory.

Pimentel said his decision to file Cuenco’s bill “as is” at the Senate was anchored on the need for the House and the Senate to present a unified stand on the issue of the baselines as required by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

“It is urgent that we do so soonest because as Congressman Cuenco has pointed out, the deadline next year is the third extension that we had asked from the UN agency authorized to handle baselines issues of UN members,” Pimentel said in filing Senate Bill 2144.

The bill, titled “An Act Defining the Archipelagic Baselines of the Philippine Archipelago,” states that the Philippines is an “archipelagic state” and its national territory comprises the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters embraced therein and all other territories over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction, consisting of its terrestrial, fluvial and aerial domains, including its territorial sea, the seabed, the subsoil, the insular shelves and other submarine areas. The waters around, between and connecting islands of the archipelago, regardless of their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the Philippines.

But Santiago, chairperson of the Senate foreign relations committee, warned that the Constitution had already defined the national territory and any attempt to declare the Philippines as an archipelagic state under the UNCLOS would require Charter change, “because it would reduce the national territory.”

Cuenco earlier accused Santiago of killing his proposal for seeking a joint congressional commission to speed up the passage of measures that would strengthen the country’s claims on the Spratlys and other disputed territories.

But according to Santiago, “the Constitution states that the national territory comprises the Philippine archipelago, and all other territories over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction. The Constitution does not describe the Philippines as an archipelagic state, which is a term of art used by the UN Convention.”

The senator said that if the Philippines would declare itself an archipelagic state, it would contradict the Treaty of Paris that set out the boundaries of the country’s national territory, “which are wider than those allowed by the UNCLOS.”