DFA: PH flag must fly over rescue center
Credit to Author: BERNADETTE E. TAMAYO| Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2019 17:41:41 +0000
FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Friday said the Philippines appreciated China for putting up for the country a “rescue center” in the West Philippine Sea, but it needed the Philippine flag to complete it.
“China puts up ‘rescue center’ in West Philippine Sea. Now, all it needs is have the Philippine flag flying over it and, of course, our undying gratitude for putting it up for us,” Locsin said in his Twitter account.
The Chinese media have reported that China had constructed a maritime rescue center in the Fiery Cross Reef or Kagitingan Reef, which was part of the West Philippine Sea.
Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo has said that perhaps the country should be grateful to China for putting up a rescue center: “Maybe we should be thankful. That could help seamen in distress, it can help everybody.”
Sen. Francis Pangilinan, however, accused Panelo of being a “Chinese puppet.”
“Secretary Panelo strikes again. Recently, he was quoted as saying that we should thank China for setting up a maritime rescue center in the Philippines’ Kagitingan Reef,” Pangilinan said.
Pangilinan noted that Panelo earlier said that it was alright for the Chinese to fish in the Spratlys and that the palace spokesman called the decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that validated the Philippines’ claims on the disputed territories in the West Philippine Sea as “useless as there is no country or body on earth that can enforce” it against China.
“One should wonder sometimes which country he was speaking for. His every tone clearly manifests the language of a Chinese puppet,” Pangilinan, a member of the Senate minority bloc, said.
Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio on Thursday urged the government to protest China’s move “because Fiery Cross Reef is part of the geological features we claim in the Kalayaan island group.”
“If we do not protest, then we impliedly consent to China’s act of putting up a maritime rescue center there. This means we are recognizing that China has a right to occupy and use Fiery Cross Reef,” Carpio said in a statement.
“Occupation and use are acts of sovereignty. This contradicts our claim that we have sovereignty over Fiery Cross Reef,” Carpio added.
The post DFA: PH flag must fly over rescue center appeared first on The Manila Times Online.