Baselines bills to compromise RP territory?

A University of the Philippines professor claimed yesterday that the two separate versions of the baselines bill approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives are unconstitutional and will compromise national sovereignty.

Lawyer Harry Roque of the Center for International Law said under the 1987 Constitution, “the waters around, between, and connecting the islands of the archipelago, regardless of their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the Philippines.”

“The two pending legislative measures, by adopting the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), would make such waters ‘archipelagic waters’ and thus subject to use by foreign vessels in the exercise of the right to innocent passage and worse, the right for planes to make flight over our airspace. Under the present wording of the Constitution, foreign vessels and airplanes cannot pass through our waters and airspace without our express consent. The two bills would do away with our right to give such consent,” Roque said in a statement.

The Senate version includes the Kalayaan Island Group and Scarborough Shoal as a “regime of islands” outside of the baselines, while the House of Representatives included them in the country’s territorial baselines.

Roque said the passage of this baselines bill would also not ensure that the country would gain the benefits of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ), where coastal zones were given by the UNCLOS the exclusive right to explore and exploit natural resources.

“While this maritime zone could indeed extend up to 200 nautical miles from our base points, the reality is because of overlaps with our neighbors at all fronts, to wit: Palau in the East, Taiwan in the North, China and Vietnam in the West, and Malaysia and Indonesia in the South, it is unlikely that we could claim up to 200 EEZ as provided in the UNCLOS. These overlaps would have to be resolved on the basis of agreements,” Roque said.

“This means that contrary to the line espoused by the government, we will not gain much by way of EEZ in exchange for our complete surrender of our sovereignty over what is today considered as Philippine internal waters,” Roque said.

Since the Philippines is the only archipelagic country among all claimant-countries to the Kalayaan Island Group or the Spratly islands, “it behooves both rhyme and reason why the Senate version opted to treat Kalayaan under the ‘regime of islands.’

“As the only archipelagic country claimant to the disputed islands, it is only the Philippines that can include the Spratlys as part of its baselines since we are the only one entitled to use these baselines. (China has used such baselines in claiming title to the Paracels even if China is clearly not an archipelago.) Unfortunately, the Senate version surrendered what in reality is our strongest claim to the disputed islands, that because we are an archipelago, the Spratlys form part of the unity of waters and islands forming our archipelago,” Roque said.

“Worse, by using the regime of islands, the Senate version has acknowledged that the islands do not form part of our archipelago, but are also distant from our mainland, including Palawan. How can we now claim that the Spratlys is a natural prolongation of the land mass of Palawan for purposes of making a claim for an extended continental shelf in the area of Kalayaan?” he argued.

Roque said the May 2009 deadline for making this claim for an extended continental shelf was what the Arroyo administration invoked as justification for rushing the enactment of a baselines law.

“This is an outright deception since the deadline is relative to making a claim for an extended EEZ and not a deadline for legislating an archipelagic baselines law,” Roque said.

“Finally, the Senate version of the law is a repudiation of a declaration which an earlier Senate required as a precondition for its concurrence to the UNCLOS. Under this declaration, the country’s territory should be governed still by our Constitution despite our decision to be a party to the UNCLOS. It is indeed a sad day in Philippine history that today’s Senate would want to render nugatory an earlier Senate-imposed declaration intended to protect our national sovereignty and patrimony,” he said.