Former foreign secretary Albert del Rosario, retired Supreme Court senior associate justice Antonio Carpio, and former ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales urged the Philippines to raise the 2016 Hague ruling against China at the United Nations.

The powerhouse trio made the joint call on Sunday, August 30, roughly two weeks before the UN General Assembly (UNGA) meets for its 75th regular session on September 15. 

“Bringing the arbitral ruling to the UNGA is not relitigating the case. It is enforcing what we already won. As international law does not have a world policeman, it is up to us to enforce the arbitral ruling by rallying other countries to our lawful position,” Del Rosario, Carpio, and Morales said. 

“If we do not help ourselves, how can we expect other countries to help us?” they added.

In 2016, the Philippines won its historical tribunal case against China, with an international tribunal junking China’s expansive claim over the South China Sea, parts of which belong to the Philippines as the West Philippine Sea.

But Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has long downplayed this victory, holding a pacifist view on the increased Chinese militarization of the West Philippine Sea – all in the name of getting grants and loans from the Asian economic giant.

In July, Foreign Secretary Teodoro “Teddyboy” Locsin Jr likened bringing up the Hague ruling before the UN to “relitigating” a case the Philippines had already won. 

“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 during a pre-State of the Nation Address forum on July 22. 

Locsin at the time was reacting to Del Rosario’s plea for the Philippine government to raise before the UN its 2016 tribunal victory against China.

Del Rosario holds the same opinion to this day, this time arguing along with Carpio and Morales that bringing up the Hague tribunal victory before the UNGA this year would allow the Philippines to gain the support of more countries.

“We, Filipinos, must not waste this chance to be heard. Having lost so many opportunities by the shelving of the arbitral ruling since 2016, it is now in our highest national interest to bring this ruling on the South China Sea to the UNGA,” they said.

The former Philippines officials then noted that past surveys have shown that Filipinos still believe the country should assert the Hague ruling.

“Raising the arbitral ruling at the UNGA is the will of the Filipino people. Surveys show that 8 out of 10 Filipinos believe that the South China Sea issues should be brought to the UNGA. Our government must listen to its people. We therefore appeal to our country’s leadership to kindly be there for us,” Del Rosario, Carpio, and Morales said. 

In recent months, however, Locsin has doubled down on the Philippines’ position in the West Philippines Sea, citing the historic 2016 Hague ruling as a “nonnegotiable” and issuing a rare warning of “severest consequences” if China’s military drills in the South China spilled into Philippine territory. 

Just 3 days ago, Locsin also invoked the Philippines’ 69-year-old defense treaty with the United States if China attacks a Philippine naval vessel in the West Philippine Sea.

Del Rosario, Carpio, and Morales are known to be champions for asserting the Philippines’ rights over the West Philippine Sea.

Carpio previously called on Duterte to stop his “defeatist attitude” on the sea row, while Del Rosario and Morales filed with the International Criminal Court a communication in March 2019 naming Chinese President Xi Jinping as respondent for alleged crimes against humanity in the West Philippine Sea. – Rappler.com