(Eagle News) — Senator Koko Pimentel on Friday, Nov. 23, hailed the government’s decision to call off the deployment of the Philippine Navy to Panatag Shoal in 2016, after the international tribunal ruling that invalidated China’s excessive claims in the West Philippine Sea.
“For me it was a good call,” Pimentel said, after Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana revealed the aborted plan prompted by President Rodrigo Duterte’s insistence the country employ a soft approach instead.
According to Pimentel, since at that time the Philippines just won the arbitration case, “a military deployment to the area being contested might add fuel to the fire and might have the effect of rubbing salt to an open wound.”
“Tensions,” then, he said “might have escalated to beyond a controllable point.”
In a forum on Friday, Nov. 23, Lorenzana said he had asked the Navy to field a small contingent in the contested area a week before he was told the Permanent Court of Arbitration had ruled in the Philippines’ favor.
Lorenzana said, however, that he changed his mind following a Cabinet meeting in which Duterte told them “to make it a [case of] soft landing [with respect to our response to the ruling].
“He told us we should not be overly celebrating, because we might offend China,” Lorenzana quoted the President as saying.
