It’s been a year pala since the Philippines won the arbitration case against China with regards to their continuous aggressive and creeping invasion of our islands in South China Sea and West Philippine Sea. The favorable ruling for the Philippines was handed down by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) The Hague, Netherlands.
The PCA was established in 1899 to provide its 121 member states (countries), international organizations or even private parties with arbitral tribunal to resolve disputes regarding international agreements. This covers maritime and territorial boundary disputes such as our case against China, human rights violations, sovereignty, violations against international trade and investments.
It is a body composed of diplomatic representatives of all member states and is presided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
Our people owe a debt of gratitude to former Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Albert F. Del Rosario, for tirelessly bringing forth our case against China to the international tribunal. For making the world body aware of our country’s and people’s plight. Sec. Allan Peter Cayetano has some big shoes to fill.
For every Filipino’s awareness, China didn’t honor that ruling and on the contrary, they totally disregarded any peaceful representation for a status quo and continued their blatant disregard for any and all international and diplomatic appeal to stop their unauthorized occupation. They has since built what their real plan was, a military base on the islands.
Philippines is a tiny speck on this planet in terms of economic and military power. We have no power to be frank about this. They can occupy our whole country and feed all of us with bad siomai and sadly we can’t do anything about it but ask for kalamansi and toyo to go with it.
