President Duterte appears to have scored a major tactical, strategic and legal victory in his quest for China to affirm the July 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration rejecting Beijing’s claim of territorial sovereignty over 90 percent of the South China Sea.
The same ruling did not rule that the Panatag or Scarborough Shoal, occupied by the Chinese four years ago, belongs to the Philippines as part of its 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. Neither did PCA rule that Panatag belongs to China.
The chain of reefs and rocks with an inner lagoon of 150 square kilometers is 198 kms west of Subic Bay, and more than 1,000 kms from Hainan, China’s southernmost province. The shoal, the court said in effect, belongs to no country because it does not qualify as a territory, it being unable to sustain human habitation. There is no water and no food. Only islands which can enable humans to live are entitled to territorial claims.
The Chinese thus have no right to take over the shoal and have no right to drive away Filipino fishermen from fishing in its fish-rich waters. The Hague ruling told the Chinese to respect the right of Filipino fishermen to fish in the area.
Since last week, fishermen from Zambales and nearby provinces have been back in full force at Scarborough, fishing as their forefathers have done for centuries. Legal experts say the Chinese in effect complied with the court ruling that Scarborough belongs to none. Also, tension in the South China Sea has suddenly eased up—exactly what many participants and observers, including the United States, have long ago demanded.
Credit Duterte’s personalized Cold War-style of diplomacy for this breakthrough of sorts. He got the Chinese to grant what he had all along wanted—to let his countrymen go fishing in Scarborough waters without him raising the issue of sovereignty and the Philippine victory from The Hague. The fishermen were getting hungry and hungry stomachs know no international law.
Disturbing, however, for the United States, the deal also unsettled a regional defense infrastructure carefully cobbled by the US over the years to stop Chinese hegemony over the South China Sea.
On Oct. 18 to 21, Duterte paid a state visit to Beijing where he declared he was now separating from the US, militarily and economically. That meant US soldiers can no longer stay in the Philippines. The President said later his wish is for all foreign troops to leave the Philippines within two years. The “separation” also meant Manila would no longer rely on aid, loans and investments from America.
The Chinese are dangling oodles of money before Manila. Duterte’s China visit is supposed to have generated $24 billion in potential loans and investments—that is more money than the Philippines got in investments in the last ten years combined.
Congrats, Mr. President!
Meanwhile, on another front, the government has suddenly lowered the Philippines’ poverty incidence to a new 30-year low, at 21.6 percent as of 2015.
Reporting on poverty in the Philippines has always been a tricky exercise.
There is no single government agency which is an authority on poverty incidence—which is measured two ways—as a percentage of the population (which means number of Filipinos) and as a percentage of total families (which means number of families). And there is no consensus on what exactly is the accurate and realistic poverty incidence.
The Philippine population is reckoned to be 102 million. If you divide that by 4.5, the number of people per family, you get 22.66-million families. As a percentage of the total number of Filipinos, poverty incidence has been reckoned to be between 26 percent and 27 percent. So 26 percent of 22.66 million is 5.89 million families who are poor. Yet, President BS Aquino’s deputy statistics chief, Dr. Jose Ramon Albert, estimated that in 2012 there were actually 17-million families who are either poor (11.28-million families) or had low income (5.77-million families).
So if you claim poverty incidence is now 21.6 percent, which means only 4.89-million families (21.6 percent of 22.66 million), does it mean the ranks of the poor have been reduced by 12-million families? In just three years? Incredible. It beats young Jesus Christ’s multiplication of the bread wherein he fed 4,000 with just seven loaves of bread. But then Jesus was God and Duterte’s men are—humans.
When he was still the economic planning secretary, Arsenio Balisacan used 26 percent and 27 percent as the fairly accurate poverty incidence.
Come now the economists of President Duterte. They are using a much-lower figure of poverty incidence—25.2 percent for 2012 and 21.6 percent for 2015.
Duterte has promised to reduce poverty incidence dramatically, from 26 percent to 17 percent, in six years, or by 2022, a reduction of nine percentage points.
The effect of the new poverty figures is that even before Duterte could start reducing poverty, poverty has reduced itself, to 21.6 percent by 2015.
This implies that this administration has already achieved half of its poverty reduction target because poverty has been reduced by exactly 4.6 percentage points. So over the next six years, Duterte needs only to reduce poverty by 4.4 percentage points (9 minus 4.6) or an average reduction of .73 point (4.4 divided by six years).
When Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez announced the nine percentage-point target reduction in poverty at the beginning of July, he was thinking of a reduction of 1.5 percentage points and even up to 2.2 percentage points per year.
Now it seems the target is a reduction of just .73 (one-third of 2.2 percentage points) per year —certainly a much more realistic and doable target—two-thirds of a percent per year.
In fairness to Dominguez, he is now using new figures of poverty reduction—from 22 percent in 2016 to 13 percent by 2022.
I hope the Duterte people do not use the kind of math they use when reckoning with the number of drugs addicts in the country—four million, up by one million in just three years.
Poverty incidence reduced by 12-million families in three years? That, my dear, is hyperbole.