Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra on Thursday, June 24, said the late former President Benigno S. Aquino III deserved “our utmost respect, admiration and gratitude.”
Guevarra served as deputy executive secretary for legal affairs during the latter part of the administration of the late former President.
“Leading a country like the Philippines with enormous social, economic, and political challenges is a colossal task. Anyone who accepts this awesome responsibility, like the late President Benigno Aquino III, deserves our utmost respect, admiration and gratitude,” he said.
He pointed out that “one of former President Aquino's biggest decisions was to confront China in an international tribunal over the issue of the West Philippine Sea.”
“Only history will judge if it was his greatest decision,” he added.
In 2013, the Aquino administration instituted arbitral proceedings against China before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague.
“The arbitration concerned the role of historic rights and the source of maritime entitlements in the South China Sea, the status of certain maritime features in the South China Sea, and the lawfulness of certain actions by China in the South China Sea that the Philippines alleged to be in violation of the Convention (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea),” PCA said in its website.
“China adopted a position of non-acceptance and non-participation in the proceedings,” it noted.
In 2016, the PCA issued an award in favor of the Philippines which has been hailed as a landmark ruling.
“The Tribunal found that China’s claim to historic rights to resources was incompatible with the detailed allocation of rights and maritime zones in the Convention and concluded that, to the extent China had historic rights to resources in the waters of the South China Sea, such rights were extinguished by the entry into force of the Convention to the extent they were incompatible with the Convention’s system of maritime zones,” the PCA said in its website.
The PCA stated: “Accordingly, the Tribunal concluded that, as between the Philippines and China, there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources, in excess of the rights provided for by the Convention, within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line.’”
It also said that “China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating or extending the Parties’ disputes during the pendency of the settlement process.”