GOTCHA, Published in The Philippine Star March 3, 2008, GOTCHA
RP was deep in yearlong talks with US telecom firm Arescom for a national broadband network when ZTE of China came along in 2006. In a flash RP dumped the first bidder and by Apr. 2007 signed a $330-million deal with the latecomer. If Filipinos find strange that twist of trade, all the more so with their government’s sudden switch of foreign loyalty from the US to China.
The year was 2002. With US backing, the Philippines had rallied the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to deal as one bloc with the rising China threat. Specifically RP wanted to push China out of the Spratlys, the dozens of isles in the South China Sea over which it and four ASEAN allies hold overlapping claims. Skirmishes had been erupting too often among China, Vietnam and the Philippines that the region was being watched as a major flashpoint. So RP prodded ASEAN and China to sign a “Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea,” with the aim of stopping China’s growing military presence. Filipino officials then crowed about a job well done standing up to a giant.
Two years later saw an abrupt change. RP broke ranks from ASEAN and opted to deal with China on its own. It just came in a rush. As reported by Barry Wain in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Jan.-Feb. 2008): “President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s hurried trip to China in late 2004 produced a major surprise. Among the raft of agreements ceremoniously signed by the two countries was one providing for their national oil companies to conduct a joint seismic study in the contentious South China Sea, a prospect that caused consternation in parts of Southeast Asia.”
There’s more, said Wain: “The Philippines also made breathtaking concessions in agreeing to the area for study, including parts of its own continental shelf not even claimed by China. Through its actions, Manila has given a certain legitimacy to China’s legally spurious ‘historic claim’ to most of the South China Sea.”
“Continental shelf” is land beneath water from the coast to the point where it begins to slope down to the ocean floor. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the shelf is part of the territory of an island-nation, much more an archipelago. By implication, RP in signing a separate pact with China not only turned its back on long-time ASEAN and US allies, but also virtually ceded its territory to Chinese exploration.
For years China and RP kept the details of the exploration agreement secret, but details have leaked into research circles of late. Wrote Wain: “The designated zone, a vast swathe of ocean off Palawan in the Southern Philippines, thrusts into the Spratlys and abuts Malampaya, a Philippine producing gas field. One-sixth of the entire area, closest to the Philippine coastline, is outside the claims by China.”
It should be stressed that China’s notion of joint exploration pertains only to areas clearly not its. The segment of the Spratlys covered by the pact with Manila engulfs only the seven islands RP occupies. Attempting to strike a similar pact with Hanoi, China tried to include islands close to Vietnam’s coast inhabited by Vietnamese for centuries, but not the Paracels over which they have conflicting claims.
So why would RP be so queer as to allow virtual foreign incursions not only on its occupied (though disputed) islands but also on its territorial shelf?
“Some would say it was a sellout on the part of the Philippines,” Wain quoted South China Sea expert Mark Valencia. “Probably for higher political purposes, the Philippines agreed to these joint surveys that include parts of its legal continental shelf that China and Vietnam don’t even claim.” Wain also noted that RP is militarily weak and lagging economically.
There might be a hint of the real reason there. For, soon after RP capitulated, China offered to lend $2 billion a year till 2010 for government projects. China wasn’t doing it out of the goodness of its heart, though. It was bursting at the seams with $2 trillion in reserves, and was to collect 4-percent interest, hardly concessional in a period of much lower rates. China was only too willing to look like it was accommodating a new ally.
Why up to 2010 is also a hint. Thence came Northrail, Southrail, the NBN-ZTE deal, and a dozen other China-funded projects since 2005. In 2007 alone, RP signed 33 new projects for financing by China Export-Import Bank. And the list is still growing.
In his Senate testimony, whistleblower Jun Lozada swore that 20 percent was the minimum kickback of government officials from these projects. In effect, RP politicians and bureaucrats had from 2005 to 2010 to make at least $400 million a year from $2-billion releases from China.
The Filipino people would pay the loans for decades, of course, while the kickbackers make instant multimillions. In the meantime, China may use joint exploration as a cover for poaching in Philippine waters. All this, courtesy of officials who will sit till 2010.
Who was it who said that behind every great wealth is a great crime? Treason and plunder ride tandem.
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E-mail: jariusbondoc@workmail.com
