Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr.’s warning against Chinese companies operating in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) may sound tough, but such a statement will not last, opposition Senator Leila de Lima said on Tuesday.
(MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)
De Lima made this assessment as she disclosed that she is unimpressed with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) chief’s pronouncements he would recommend the cancellation of contracts of Chinese companies that aided China in building military installations and artificial islands in the disputed maritime region.
“Beyond the tough talk, Locsin’s statement is nothing more than a reiteration of Duterte’s oft-repeated statement, a broken record in fact, that we cannot do anything about China’s invasion of the Spratlys and our EEZ (exclusive economic zone) in the WPS because we will just lose a war with China,” De Lima said.
The senator also said such laudable stance on the part of Foreign Affairs Secretary “was not to last even for a minute,” because in the same breath, he again rejected former DFA Secretary Albert Del Rosario’s proposal to bring the enforcement of the Arbitral ruling to the UN General Assembly, “saying we will only lose to China.”
De Lima said it is a given that the Philippines must follow the lead of the United States and immediately reject these contracts.
She said these Chinese companies are complicit in the Chinese government’s open defiance of the 2016 Philippine-China arbitral ruling on the South China Sea and blatant violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), “as well as China’s unlawful intrusions into, or theft of Philippine territory.”
“They are also stealing employment from our local workers because unlike other foreign contractors, these Chinese companies normally utilize Chinese labor,” she lamented.
Even with the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, and the whole of Southeast Asia (except probably Laos and Cambodia) behind the Philippines in its victory in the UNCLOS arbitral ruling against China, De Lima noted that Locsin chooses to stay ahead of the game by surrendering even before the battle begins.
“For a diplomat, that can only be an indication of a work ethic that does not inspire struggles towards victory. So what are we paying him for? To cry for the President in front of OFWs?” she said.
“Locsin is not fooling us in appearing to project a tough stance on China to match the US’s blacklisting of Chinese companies responsible for the Spratlys reclamation projects. In his final word on the matter, it’s all wind and no balls,” she said.