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By William B. Depasupil, Reporter
A group of lawyers and law students from the University of the
Philippines and a lawmaker on Wednesday challenged the
constitutionality of the just-enacted Philippine Baselines Law on
the ground that it did not protect the country’s territorial
sovereignty.
In a 71-page petition to the Supreme Court, the
petitioners led by UP College of Law professors Merlin Magallona and
Harry Roque and Akbayan party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel
asked the High Court for the issuance of a writ of preliminary
prohibitory injunction or a temporary restraining order to stop the
implementation and the registration of the law with the United
Nations.
Named respondents were Executive Secretary
Eduardo Ermita, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, Budget and
Management Secretary Rolando Andaya, National Mapping and Resource
Information Authority chief Diony Ventura and former Chief Justice
Hilario Davide Jr. in his capacity as the Philippine Ambassador to
the UN.
The petitioners said the baselines law, or
Republic Act 9522, in effect, has amended the Philippine archipelago
as defined by the 1987 Constitution. The new law has unduly given
away 15,000 square nautical miles of territorial sea and weakened
the country’s claim to the Kalayaan Group of Islands in the South
China and Sabah in Malaysia, they added.
They also pointed out that by declaring the
Kalayaan group and the Scarborough Shoal, as stated in Section 2 of
the baselines law, as mere regimes of island, the Philippines “in
effect shall have lost about 15,000 square nautical miles of
territorial waters.”
“By surrendering the above-mentioned
territorial waters through the passage of Republic Act 9522
excluding the [Kalayaan Group of Islands] and the Scarborough Shoal
from the baselines, the state has reneged on its constitutional duty
to protect our exclusive marine wealth and the offshore fishing
grounds of our subsistence fishermen,” the petitioners said.
“The failure by the state to preserve our
territorial waters as originally construed by the Constitution and
by our historic claims [to] the presently constituted regimes of
islands is an affront to the constitutional mandate to protect our
marine wealth and offshore fishing grounds,” they added.
Compliant with UNCLOS
President Gloria Arroyo signed the law on March
10, 2998. Its enactment into law was intended to fulfill the
country’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the
Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS), which the Philippines signed on May 8,
1984. All member-countries of the United Nations have until May 13,
2009, to submit and register their baselines laws.
The petitioners argued that while the law was
well-intentioned inasmuch as it purportedly updates Philippine
treaty commitments under the UN convention, it failed to protect the
country’s sovereignty because it deprived the Philippines of what
has been established long before in historical, legal and scientific
terms as part and parcel of its national territory.
They also argued that “the language of UNCLOS
III does not indicate any mandatory obligation of the member-states
to draw straight archipelagic baselines, nor to submit a baselines
law. Moreover, the May 13, 2009, deadline was not a deadline to
submit a baselines law, but rather to submit claims pertaining to
the extension of the continental shelf.
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