Vice President Leni Robredo should be “more circumspect” in commenting about South China Sea issue and rely on her instincts as a lawyer and mother protective of the nation, Malacañang said Friday.
Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo also urged Robredo to hire new political advisers who are knowledgeable in geopolitics and diplomacy following her alleged “misplaced and flamboyant” comments about the maritime issue.
Robredo earlier said it was “profoundly disappointing and extremely irresponsible” for President Duterte to declare the Philippines will set aside the 2016 arbitral victory in the maritime dispute with China to pave the way for a joint oil exploration project. Any agreement “should not come at the expense of upholding our rights to the West Philippine Sea,” the Vice President added.
“We hope that the Vice President will be more circumspect in issuing statements on the matter and rely more on her instinct as a lawyer and mother protective of those she is constitutionally tasked to shepherd,” Panelo said.
“Like the usual detractors and critics of the President, VP Robredo may have been carried away by their nitpicking and habitual engagement in useless and unproductive semantics,” he added.
Borrowing Robredo’s words, Panelo also found “profoundly disappointing and extremely irresponsible” the Vice President’s penchant of “finding fault in every word the President says, as well as issuing misplaced and flamboyant remarks against it.”
He suggested that Robredo should also replace her political advisers “with some erudite intellectuals knowledgeable in geopolitics and in the art of diplomacy.”
“The problem with my friend Vice President Leni Robredo is the inability of her political advisers to comprehend the complexities of our current situation with China,” he said.
Panelo told Robredo that Duterte was not in any way surrendering the country’s rights over the West Philippine Sea even as it would pursue a joint oil exploration project with China.
He insisted that the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling, that invalidated China’s excessive claims in the South China Sea, was final, binding, and unappealable.
He said such ruling would “be there forever and ever, as in forever.” “It has the permanence of the Rock of Gibraltar whose extinction can come only when there is a massive geographical movement of the Earth’s surface,” he said. (Genalyn Kabiling)
