The rush passage by both houses of Congress of the new Baselines Law has trigerred a strong protest from Beijing.
Read the bill here:
http://www.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/91138292!.pdf
The official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, carries the protest move as main banner story of its on-line edition.
What we have here now is the Arroyo regime confronting both China and the United States with the Daniel Smith custody wrangle still simmering!
A former undersecretary of foreign affairs told this writer just over the weekend that “what Congress has done here is an attempt to revise the Philippines’s territorial domain beyond the coverage of long existing international treaty limits.”
Those are the very limits provided in the Treaty of Paris at the turn of the previous millenium and cannot be done unilaterally by any nation,” my source said.
What have the Senate and the House of Representatives done here?
If President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo foolishly signs the revised Philippine Baselines bill into law she may put the Philippines on the threshold of a shooting war with the People’s Republic of China
Are we fully ready to assert the widened coverage of the nation’s territorial limits through force of arms with our practically non-existent Philippine Navy?
Whatever happened to the Ramos-era formula of joint stewardship of areas where countries have overlapping claims??
Popularity: 1% [?]
Considering the unpopularity of this administration to its people, the Filipino people, that has brought us to the brink of conflicts a number of times already, perhaps a shooting war with China is a better alternative, if conflict it is that would give us a sense of unity.
It will bring us down to a same result but at least we all die fighting together as one against a foreign common enemy and not against each other.
May I know exactly the SB number? The HB number?
Better still, somebody post the full text of the bill under this topic?
Abangan po. :)
Este aqui:
http://www.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/91138292!.pdf
Ding,
I don’t think this will result to war. And, honestly, the Baseline Bill is full has conceded to china, especially on Scarborough Shoal, which is supposed to be within the main archipelago instead of just a regime of islands.
J,
We are on the same page, you will realize . This is the reason attention is being drawn to the bill before it is signed into law.
Remember that blasted MoA-AD?
Public condemnation on the ground and in the blogospehere forced the government of the day to pull back from the edge one month after announcing the supposed “breakthrough.”
The last I will be is a warmonger. I’m raising my two lovely kids. :)