Carlos shrugs off China’s rejection of arbitral ruling on WPS

Secretary Clarita Carlos, national security adviser. (Photo by  NIÑO JESUS ORBETA / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines — National Security Adviser Clarita Carlos on Monday dismissed the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s recent remark rejecting the 2016 arbitration ruling that invalidated China’s sweeping claims to almost the entire South China Sea as “nothing new.”

“They have said that before but I think we have made our position clear there, and the President of the Republic has made our position clear. It’s not anything new,” she told reporters when asked to comment on Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s comments that the ruling “seriously violates international law” and was “illegal, null and void.”

The July 2016 ruling from an arbitral tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in a case lodged by the Philippines in 2013, rejected China’s nine-dash line claims in the South China Sea, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

‘Indisputable’

Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo stressed during last week’s sixth anniversary of the 2016 ruling that the arbitration court’s findings were “conclusive” and “indisputable.”

“We firmly reject attempts to undermine it; nay, even erase it from law, history, and our collective memories,” the country’s top diplomat said.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has vowed to defend national sovereignty, but has also expressed plans to expand ties with China to a “higher level.”

Carlos, who received her first briefing from the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) at its headquarters in Manila on Monday, has yet to lay out her guidelines and policies to the PCG as national security adviser and concurrent chair of the National Task Force-West Philippine Sea.

“She was given a briefing about what the Philippine Coast Guard is—our patrol operations in Benham Rise, West Philippine Sea, southern Philippines, and our other functions,” PCG spokesperson Commodore Armand Balilo told reporters.