Sotto offers fishy take on sea ‘exclusivity’

Chinese fish or Filipino fish? Chinese-Filipino fish, perhaps?

That’s a difficult one so Senate President Vicente Sotto III won’t stand for invoking the exclusivity clause of the Constitution on the exploitation of Philippine marine resources.

Article XII, Section 2 of the Constitution reserves the use of marine resources found in Philippine waters for Filipinos, but Sotto, speaking in a television interview on Thursday, said it was technically impossible to determine what exclusively belonged to Filipinos under the sea.

“It’s very difficult to say that there’s exclusivity when it’s under water,” he said. “The fish could be coming from China, and the fish from the Philippines could be going to China if we want to be technical about it and relate it to the constitutionality of what should be owned by us.”

Chinese fish may be Filipino

He added that “exclusive types” of fish found in China might have migrated from the Philippines.

Sotto didn’t venture to recommend a marine census to determine the nationality of fish found in Philippine waters, but it was clear where he stood in the controversy generated by President Duterte by declaring that fishing by the Chinese in the West Philippine Sea was fine with him because China and the Philippines were “friends.”

Impeachment

He said those who believed Duterte had violated the Constitution by allowing foreigners to have access to resources in the West Philippine Sea—the waters within the country’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea—could file a complaint for his impeachment.

In a presidential impeachment, the Senate tries and decides the charges against the President.

The Sotto Senate is dominated by allies of Duterte.

The question of a ban on Chinese access to the West Philippine Sea has come up as an offshoot of the controversy caused by the sinking on the night of June 9 of a Philippine fishing boat in the South China Sea after being hit by a Chinese trawler that then abandoned the Filipino crew in the open sea.

The Filipino fishermen initially reported an intentional hit but toned down their complaint after high-ranking administration officials talked to them and gave them fishing boats, food and cash.

No ramming

In his television interview on Thursday, Sotto said he had seen pictures from the Coast Guard that indicated an accident and not a deliberate hit.

“If you look at the pictures—and these were sent to me by a Coast Guard expert—you will see that the [stern] of the Filipino vessel was hit by the mast, by the boom, of the Chinese vessel. And therefore it doesn’t look like it was rammed, because if it was going to be rammed, it’s going to be hit on the side,” Sotto said.

Since the Philippine boat was hit on the stern, the Chinese vessel must have been maneuvering to avoid a collision, he said, citing Coast Guard analysis.

He, however, said “full investigations” were welcome. The Philippines could investigate, he said, but added that a joint investigation with China, to which Malacañang had said Duterte had agreed, was not farfetched.

Vice President Leni Robredo found Sotto’s remarks “insensitive.”

“[W]e have fishermen whose rights were violated. For me, at this point, we have to make sure that the fishermen won’t feel like they have been abandoned,” Robredo told reporters on Thursday.

‘Tongue in cheek’

Sotto came back, tweeting that he did not mean what he said about the exclusivity clause.

“My responses [to the questions about access to the West Philippine Sea] were done with tongue in cheek. I’m tired of talking about it,” he said.

He issued a separate statement saying his remarks about fish in the South China Sea were not supposed to be taken seriously. “Sadly, only a few understand,” Sotto said. —REPORTS FROM KATRINA HALLARE, LEILA B. SALAVERRIA, JHESSET O. ENANO AND NEIL ARWIN MERCADO