By Herman Tiu Laurel

 

To “lay an egg” means “to be completely unsuccessful; badly fail” and I am using this to refer to the 2016 Hague ruling on the South China Sea case filed by then Noynoy Aquino government against China’s claims.

            It’s been eight years since that ruling by The Hague “Tribunal”, regularly referred to as the Arbitration Panel, which was never actually a court nor did it conduct any arbitration as China never participated – it was a mere secretariat receiving one-sided testimonies and evidence and opinions of a panel paid-for by the Philippine government.

The most memorable lines about the 2016 Hague Arbitration Panel “award” to is from former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio who in 2015 said that China will be forced to comply with the ruling “one way or another” and accept the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and territorial claims of the Philippines.

Eight years have passed and China has not once complied with the Arbitration ruling, and the Philippines control no EEZ and certainly even lost territorial claims it made due to incompetence of the American and legal panel allowing the Tribunal to classify “low lying features”

Over the past decade the Philippines lost control of the Scarborough Shoal by default to China after Philippine Navy ships were ordered to abandon the shoal, and in 2023 to 2024 the Philippines effectively buttressed China’s clam to the Ayungin Shoal by its continuing failure to challenge with any measure of success Chinese control.

The Tribunal ruled that “low tide elevations” do not generate EEZ nor territorial entitlement hence “None of the features in the Spratly Islands generates an EEZ, nor can the Spratly Islands generate an EEZ collectively as a unit.” China’s claims are not based on UNCLOS but on International Customary Law and, therefore, not covered by this “award.”

To be very clear, the Arbitration award in paragraph 272 says:

“In particular, the Tribunal emphasizes that nothing in this Award should be understood to comment in any way on China’s historic claim to the islands of the South China Sea. Nor does the Tribunal’s decision that a claim of historic rights to living and non-living resources is not compatible with the Convention limit China’s ability to claim maritime zones in accordance with the Convention, on the basis of such islands.”

Despite the egg in their faces the instigators of the arbitration Tribunal believed that through “Lawfare”, i.e. war using Law, combined with what is now known as “cognitive warfare” formerly known as propaganda or information warfare, the Americans and their Filipino-proxies could manufacture enough belief in the fool’s gold at the end of the arbitration rainbow to fixate the Filipino national psyche to obsess with it and to go to a suicidal war for it.

Seven years after the 2016 award the U.S. in 2023 thought up the ”Myoushu Project” or “assertive transparency” campaign to provoke China’s Coast Guard  (CCG) into taking deterrent action against deliberate provocations by the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) towing along ships loaded with international and Filipino media video cameras galore to record, broadcast and dramatize laser light signaling, blockading and water cannon tactics of the CCG as “bullying” and ”aggression.”

            After a-year-and-a-half of the “assertive transparency” strategy of the Americans which was met at every stage by firm responses from the CCG and, finally, on June 17, 2024 by unconventional tactical escalation of the CCG that put the US and Philippine hawks in a quandary to meet the escalation with the invoking of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) or de-escalation, they chose the latter and got more eggs in their faces.

            Despite all the failures, the instigators hype up the arbitration to cover the continuing fiasco, the massive opportunity cost lost from the scary investment climate the Philippines due to this tension and the loss of Chinese investments that ASEAN is cashing in on isolating Philippines. So, in the 8^th anniversary of the arbitration award the Stratbase-ADRI has “The ‘biggest-ever’ West PH Sea” featuring all the failed US and Filipino preaching to the choir.

            The biggest egg laid by the arbitration award to date is this anniversary conference, it is confirmation of how empty the whole eight years of arbitration that the “arbitration chasers”, ala ambulance chasers, are demanding a new arbitration suit against China to extend their expensive legal retainers’ fees from the Philippine government and the U.S. to continue the “lawfare” against China.

            On June 30, 2024 the US-proxy rag Daily Inquirer reported Justice Antonio Carpio “again pressed the government to file new arbitration cases against China” , then on July 12, 2024 US-proxy rag PhilStar reported retired Supreme Court justice Francis Jardeleza advising to file “another one before… managed solely by the Office or the Solicitor General… without the heavy cost of hiring foreign counsel,”  their own pockets this time unlike the first.

   

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