Senator Richard J. Gordon welcomed Wednesday a Senate floor debate on multi-faceted maritime and military issues surrounding conflicting territorial claims over parts of the South China Sea.
Gordon thanked neophyte Senator Francis Tolentino for triggering the debate when he defended President Duterte’s verbal agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping that Chinese fishermen could catch fish in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone .
The debate, according to Gordon, ‘’reflects our thinking’’ on these issues triggered by the refusal of China to accept or honor the 2016 ruling of the United Nations Arbitration Court rejecting China’s territorial claim over most parts of the South China Sea and favoring the Philippine territorial claim.
Some of the latest issues are the ‘’confrontation’’ between Vietnam and China over their fishing rights and the passage at the Sibutu Strait, a Philippine territory, by China’s carrier, Liaoning. At one point, Drilon, a former Senate President and former Justice secretary put Tolentino into a corner when he said he is a mere lawyer and not a legal luminary as painted by Tolentino.
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