FORMER Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea yesterday denied former President Rodrigo Duterte forged a “secret deal” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, under which the Philippines will refrain from repairing the warship BRP Sierra Madre that was grounded at the Ayungin Shoal in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) to serve as a military outpost.
Medialdea, at the continuation of the joint hearing of the House committee on national defense and the special committee on the West Philippine Sea, also said the commitment to maintain the status quo began in 2013 under the Aquino administration.
Medialdea said that based on the information he gathered after assuming the post in 2016, the status quo at the Ayungin Shoal “was in a 2013 commitment of former Defense Secretary (Voltaire) Gazmin to the Chinese Ambassador Ma Keqing that he would only deliver food
and water to the marines stationed at the vessel.”
The joint panel hearing later approved a motion of Rep. France Castro (PL, ACT) to invite Gazmin to the next hearing.
Lawmakers have also invited former Duterte spokesman Harry Roque who was the first to claim Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping forged the secret deal, or “gentleman’s agreement, covering supply missions for soldiers stationed at the BRP Sierra Madre.
Medialdea said he attended two Duterte-Xi meetings, first was Xi’s state visit to the Philippines in November 2018, and Duterte’s official visit to China in August 2019, “and no gentleman’s agreement ever took place between President Duterte and President Xi.”
“President Duterte, being a lawyer, knew fully well that it was foolhardy to enter into an agreement, especially a gentleman’s agreement at that, with the President of the People’s Republic of China on matters involving sovereign rights,” he told the joint panel.
Medialdea said Duterte and Xi had eight official meetings between October 2016 and August 2019 and the former president was always accompanied by his incumbent foreign affairs secretaries, the late secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr., then acting secretary now Secretary Enrique Manalo; secretary, now Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano; and secretary, now Ambassador to the United Kingdom Teodoro Locsin Jr.
The alleged secret deal that only food and water would be delivered to troops stationed at Ayungin Shoal meant that BRP Sierra Madre, which has been serving as the Philippine military’s outpost since 1999, will eventually crumble, endangering the Philippines’ claim over the area.
Duterte’s Former Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and his former National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon also attended the hearing after skipping it last Monday because of prior commitments.
Medialdea told Rep. Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez (PL, 1-Rider) said he got the information that Gazmin and Ma were responsible for the Ayungin Shoal deal during the first several days of the Duterte administration, when it was preparing for the July 12, 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) decision which awarded the arbitral victory to the Philippines.
“I cannot elaborate (on) it particularly on the status, that’s what I gathered when the decision came out 12 days after we assumed office, I was asking around what is the present status at Ayungin Shoal because I know there was a vessel there, and the information I gathered was that there was a previous commitment that food and water will be allowed to be shipped to the dilapidated vessel since 2013,” he said.
“I got that source from one of the officials before, I cannot recall (who), it was an off-the-cuff query when the decision was about to come out, ‘Ano bang status diyan (What is the status there)?’ That was it,” Medialdea added.
DFA UNAWARE
A representative of the Department of Foreign Affairs told the hearing the department was unaware of any 2013 commitment.
In May 2013, China opposed the Philippines’ reported plan to establish structures on Ayungin Shoal, during a brief meeting between Gazmin and Ma on the sidelines of the commemoration of the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers at Camp Aguinaldo.
In 2014, Gazmin told a Senate budget hearing that the Philippine Navy was able to conduct resupply missions to Ayungin Shoal without being harassed by Chinese maritime surveillance vessels.
Lorenzana said he was unaware of Gazmin’s alleged deal with Ma because he “transmitted no such thing to me when he briefed me.” He said despite Duterte’s status quo policy on Ayungin, the Philippine Navy started repairing “our soldiers housing quarters in BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin to make them comfortable.”
“That’s when the Chinese Coast Guard started blasting us with their water cannons. They thought we were trying to strengthen BRP Sierra Madre,” Lorenzana told lawmakers.
Lorenzana said he attended almost all of the Duterte-Xi meetings between 2016 and 2019 and “it was very telling that, at their last meeting in 2019, President Duterte asserted in front of everybody in the bilateral meeting, that he’s asserting the rights of the Philippines over the (WPS), on the basis of the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) in the arbitral ruling.”
He said Xi told Duterte that China also claims the area and that “we cannot resolve this matter within our lifetime, but maybe our children and grandchildren will be smart enough to find a solution.”
Last March 27, Roque confirmed the secret pact when asked to comment on China’s aggression whenever the Philippines try to conduct resupply missions for troops at the BRP Sierra Madre. He said then China may have been acting that way as the Philippines was no longer honoring the agreement, which, he admitted, was non-binding.
Duterte, who initially denied that there was such a pact, later admitted that he and Xi had an agreement to maintain the status quo in the WPS to keep the peace in the area and avoid any conflict. He said the agreement meant that there will be “no movement, no armed patrols.”
NO ACTION
Gonzales said assuming the Gazmin promise really existed, the fact remained that Duterte did not disturb the status quo even after the Philippines won the arbitration case.
“The arbitral court declared that Ayungin was ours, that we have sovereign rights over that area. We could have done what we wanted to do there – in fact, we could do anything – but we did not,” he said.
Gutierrez also said the Duterte administration’s decision to preserve the status quo from 2016 to 2022 came as a “shocking surprise” to him because less than a month into office, the former president was already aware of the country’s arbitral victory over disputed areas in the West Philippine Sea, including Scarborough Shoal, Mischief Reef and Ayungin Shoal.
Gutierrez informed his colleagues and the committees’ resource persons that he searched the internet and found that the alleged Gazmin promise did not exist.
Castro said the statements of Medialdea, Lorenzana and Esperon that no gentleman’s agreement was made on Ayungin Shoal “prove that all those assertions by China that such an agreement existed are all lies.”
The two panels later suspended the hearing and opted to hold a closed-door session to listen to testimonies on issues bordering on national security.
TRESPASS ISSUE
Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo yesterday said China’s policy empowering its coast guard to detain foreign nationals supposedly trespassing in the South China Sea is inconsistent with the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).
“We have to see what will happen but obviously whatever they said, if that’s correct, is inconsistent with UNCLOS,” Manalo said in an ambush interview on the sidelines of the Indo-Pacific Business Forum at the Shangri-la the Fort in Taguig City.
He did not elaborate.
Manalo was asked to comment on the remarks of China that the Philippines had a malicious misinterpretation of its new regulations in the SCS.
“When they announced it, it was quite clear, so, I mean, what’s malicious to it,” Manalo said.
President Marcos Jr. has said China’s new policy is “completely unacceptable to the Philippines.”
The Chinese government said that starting June, the China Coast Guard could detain trespassers in the South China Sea for up to 60 days.
China, which is claiming most of the South China Sea, has overlapping claims with several nations — the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia and Taiwan.
In the past months, tension between the Philippines and China had escalated after the latter started using water cannons against Filipino vessels that were delivering food and supplies to an old Navy ship at the Ayungin Shoal. China had also been blocking and harassing Filipino vessels and fishing boats at the Scarborough Shoal area.
CHINESE VESSELS
The Armed Forces has monitored 128 Chinese vessels in Scarborough Shoal and in Philippine-occupied features in the West Philippine Sea from May 14 to 20.
The number increased by 30, from just 98 Chinese vessels that were monitored in the previous week.
Data provided by the Navy showed 108 of the 128 vessels monitored from May 14 to 20 are Chinese maritime vessels, 14 are Chinese Coast Guard vessels, and six Chinese Navy ships.
Fifty-five of the 128 vessels were sighted at Scarborough Shoal — 42 maritime vessels, nine Coast Guard vessels and four Navy vessels during the previous. There were only 28 Chinese vessels in the area in the previous week.
The Atin Ito coalition embarked on a voyage to the shoal last week to distribute food packs and fuel to Filipino fishermen in the area. This prompted China to deploy a large number of vessels, officials earlier said.
China gained control of the shoal in 2012 after a standoff with Philippine government vessels. China has prevented Filipino fishermen from going inside the shoal’s lagoon since then.
At the Philippine-occupied Pag-asa Island, there were 27 Chinese maritime militia vessels, two Chinese Navy vessels and a Chinese Coast Guard vessel in the area from May 14 to 20.
There were 25 Chinese maritime vessels and four Chinese Coast Guard vessels seen in Ayungin Shoal during the same period.
Fourteen other Chinese maritime vessels were sighted at five other — seven at Panata Island, three at Patag island, two at Lawak Island, and one each at Kota and Likas islands. — With Jocelyn Montemayor, Victor Reyes, and Ashzel Hachero
