Senate to start probe on Chinese incursions

Senator Loren Legarda. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

With Philippine sovereignty at stake, the Senate is flexing its muscles by holding an inquiry starting Friday into China’s incursions into the West Philippine Sea, known to the rest of the world as South China Sea.

“We should protect our maritime security, which also means food sustainability and environmental security. Let’s protect it at all cost,” said Senator Loren Legarda, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, in a phone interview yesterday.

The focus of inquiry is not just maritime defense, but also environmental security and protection of maritime resources and the livelihood of the fisherfolk, she said.

“But force should never be an option,” Legarda emphasized, even as she called on China to “respect our territorial integrity and sovereignty” by “preventing and avoiding any incursion into our territory.”

Instead of a “shooting war” and “show of force” between Chinese and Philippine Navy and Coast Guard vessels, Legarda wanted to “exhaust all diplomatic means.”

The committee is still drawing up the list of resource persons, although it is clear that Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) officials and experts in international law will be summoned to the inquiry.

Legarda supported a proposal by Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario to submit for UN arbitration the territorial disputes over the Spratlys and Panatag Shoal with China, a move spurned by Beijing, which favored bilateral negotiations.

“We have rights to our territory, the right to file a diplomatic protest and note verbale, and to issue a statement. Which is what we’ve been doing. We should internationalize both disputes,” she said.