MANILA, Philippines — Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. rejected anew calls to bring the country’s arbitral victory against China’s claim over the South China Sea before the United Nations, saying it will only become a question of numbers.
Last week, former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said the Philippines should call attention to the arbitral award during the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.
“We won it already. Why would you want to relitigate something that you won? It’s like, you don’t like you won? That doesn’t make any sense so I rejected it,” Locsin said in a pre-State of the Nation Address forum.
“But do you want to bring it up to the United Nations? We won it. We don’t need to go back to the United Nations. We bring it back to the United Nations and it becomes a question of numbers. And this has nothing to do with numbers. This has to be with law,” he went on.
Locsin previously rejected bringing the arbitral victory before the UN saying the Philippines would “lose” since the body is “dominated by countries grateful to China for its indisputable generosity in development aid.”
Malacañang, meanwhile, earlier said it will “agree to disagree” with China’s rejection of the country’s appeal for compliance with the 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated the latter’s claim to the South China Sea.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Manila’s disagreement with Beijing over the ruling, however, is not the sum of its relations with China.