Story:

SPECIAL REPORT:
Sovereignty To Surrender

By Dr. Jose Antonio Socrates

HOUSE BILL 2031 IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL -House Bill 2031 will abolish the Treaty of Paris Line, surrender half of our territorial sea away, put Malampaya/Camago outside our national territory, minimize Philippine sovereignty over our internal waters, allow aliens to fish in our waters, open corridors across archipelago for the free passage of other countries’ wastes and noxious materials…all these probably in pursuit of hidden agenda.

PART I: AMERICAN ABOUT FACE
If a government official elected to represent nation’s interests willingly surrenders a large part of the country’s territory without a fight or hesitation, shouldn’t that traitor face a firing squad for betraying the people’s trust?
By abolishing the Treaty of Paris Line, House Bill 2031 will remove Malampaya/Camago from our territorial waters. It will also surrender away half of the maritime territory of the Republic of the Philippines. If these are not oversights like the house bill’s failure to realize the insecurity it exposes our continental shelf and its resources to, then these are deliberate acts. If so, might they have been calculated in pursuit of a hidden agenda?
The Treaty of Paris Line gives Palawan ownership of Malampaya/Camago. America and Spain signed that treaty in 1898. Yet in a statement of protest against the Declaration which the Philippines made upon ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) the United States declared that neither treaties nor practice “has conferred upon the US nor upon the Republic of the Philippines as successor to the US, greater rights in the waters surrounding the Philippine Islands than are otherwise recognized in international law.” In other words, the present USA now rejects that past USA’s definition of the political boundary of the Philippines. To the later, the territorial definition archipelago is subject to the rules of UNCLOS 1982 not to the treaty signed by the former in 1898.
This reversal is contrary to the United States’ own actuations as a colonial power regarding Philippine Territory and contradicts its own major legislative enactments of colonial policy governing the Philippines. In 1902, by authority of the US Congress, the US Government published Document No. 280, “A Pronouncing Gazetteer and Geographical dictionary of the Philippine Islands.” This fixed the boundaries of the Philippine Islands in its maps and charts by using the coordinates of the Treaty of Paris Limits. That boundary has struck ever since.
The 64th Congress of the USA approved in August 29, 1961 U.S. Public Law No. 240 which we know as the “Jones Law or the Philippine Autonomy Act. This laid down the territorial basis for the exercise of the US Sovereignty and Jurisdiction in the Philippines. This colonial law specifically states that the 1898 Treaty of Paris defined the “boundaries” of the Philippines.
For the determination of Philippine Territorial Limits, in addition to the Treaty of Paris, the US signed in 2 January 1930, this time with Great Britain, the Convention Delimiting the boundary Between the Philippine Archipelago and the State of North Borneo. This agreement explicitly refers to the Treaty of Paris Line as a boundary line.
The Tydings-McDuffie law of the US Congress was the legal basis for the transfer of territorial sovereignty over our archipelago from the USA to an independent Philippine State. During the transition period the Tydings- Mcduffie law instituted a Government of the Commonwealth of the Philippines which, as provided in Section 1: “Shall exercise jurisdiction over all the territory ceded to the United States by Spain… the boundaries of which are set forth in…said Treaty.”
This was eventually followed by the Philippine Constitution of 1935, duly approved by the President of United State of America, which specifically states that “The Philippines comprises all the territory ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris…” Then to conduct its colonial affairs in the Philippines the US through the Government of the Philippine Islands enacted in 1917 an ADMINISTRATIVE CODE which defined the “territorial jurisdiction and extent of powers of the Philippine Government” in terms of the Treaty of Paris.
The territorial limits of the Philippines consistently and uniformly used by all these enactments also determined the extent by which the American colonial government actually applied its sovereign power. How can the Americans now say that they should no longer apply for our independent jurisdiction? For as long as they absolute control of it as a colonial power our vast maritime territory served the
Americans well. Now that as a global superpower they must respect our control of it, our extended maritime territory is inconvenient to the USA. The Americans now say that the limits set forth in the Treaty of Paris are not boundaries but represent “lines of allocation for the islands only and do not necessarily include the waters within.” If that is correct, then it shouldn’t have been necessary to document the coordinates defining the treaty line. Any arbitrary line drawn around the islands, or a mere enumeration of the islands, would have sufficed. Ironically, for purely selfish reasons, the United States of America is NOT a signatory to UNCLOS, much less ratified it. In as much as the International Law of the Sea curtails its powers in and free access of the oceans of the world (by its aircraft carriers, nuclear powered submarines and other warships), the USA reserves its recognition of UNCLOS.
For the same self serving reasons America would like us now to collapse our maritime territory from the vast area bestowed by the Treaty of Paris to the meager area that is now being claimed for legislation by House Bill 2031. The reduction is by almost fifty percent.
This was eventually followed by the Philippine Constitution of 1935, duly approved by the President of United State of America, which specifically states that “The Philippines comprises all the territory ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris…” Then to conduct its colonial affairs in the Philippines the US through the Government of the Philippine Islands enacted in 1917 an ADMINISTRATIVE CODE which defined the “territorial jurisdiction and extent of powers of the Philippine Government” in terms of the Treaty of Paris.
The territorial limits of the Philippines consistently and uniformly used by all these enactments also determined the extent by which the American colonial government actually applied its sovereign power. How can the Americans now say that they should no longer apply for our independent jurisdiction? For as long as they absolute control of it as a colonial power our vast maritime territory served the
Americans well. Now that as a global superpower they must respect our control of it, our extended maritime territory is inconvenient to the USA. The Americans now say that the limits set forth in the Treaty of Paris are not boundaries but represent “lines of allocation for the islands only and do not necessarily include the waters within.” If that is correct, then it shouldn’t have been necessary to document the coordinates defining the treaty line. Any arbitrary line drawn around the islands, or a mere enumeration of the islands, would have sufficed. Ironically, for purely selfish reasons, the United States of America is NOT a signatory to UNCLOS, much less ratified it. In as much as the International Law of the Sea curtails its powers in and free access of the oceans of the world (by its aircraft carriers, nuclear powered submarines and other warships), the USA reserves its recognition of UNCLOS.
For the same self serving reasons America would like us now to collapse our maritime territory from the vast area bestowed by the Treaty of Paris to the meager area that is now being claimed for legislation by House Bill 2031. The reduction is by almost fifty percent.