By ELLEN TORDESILLAS
DECLARING she was following President Arroyo’s order, Sen. Miriam Santiago, chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, said Wednesday she will defer action on Senate Bill 1467 and House Bill 1202 that seek to define the country’s archipelagic baseline.
Santiago described SB 1467 and HB 1202 as “honest and sincere,” but at the same time criticized them as approaching “the national territorial problems piecemeal.”
SB1467 is authored by detained Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV. Authored by Rep. Antonio Cuenco, chair of the House foreign relations committee, HB 1202 has been referred to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council after it passed second reading last December.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said LEDAC did not discuss the proposed baseline law in its Tuesday meeting. The next LEDAC meeting will be next month.
In a letter to House Speaker Prospero Nograles, Santiago said, “Pursuant to President Arroyo’s directive, I am going to shelve the two bills on archipelagic baselines, consisting of Senate Bill No. 1467 and House Bill 1202.”
She appealed to Nograles to instead give priority to a resolution seeking to creating a congressional commission on national territory filed by her son, party-list representative Narciso D. Santiago Jr. She said she is introducing a similar resolution in the Senate.
Santiago’s statement that she was following Arroyo’s instruction to shelve the baseline bills has strengthened the opposition’s claim that the legislature was capitulating to the executive department.
Several minority lawmakers earlier opposed the decision of the House to refer Cuenco’s bill to the Malacañang-supervised LEDAC.
Meanwhile, another administration senator, Edgardo Angara, filed Senate Bill 2181 hewing closely to Malacañang’s position that the Kalayaan Island Group should be treated as a “regime of islands” and not part of the main archipelago.
Angara’s bill is silent on Scarborough Shoal, which Malacañang also prefers to treat as a regime of islands. Both SB 1467 and HB 1202 include Scarborough Shoal as part of the main archipelago.
Santiago warned against declaring the country an archipelagic state. “Then we would adopt certain features which would be violating Philippine constitutional provision on national territory,” she said.
She furnished the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Embassy a copy of her letter to Nograles.
The Chinese Embassy had earlier protested the passage of Cuenco’s bill, which encloses both the Kalayaan and Scarborough Shoal in the main archipelago.