[Music] within its six years in office the duterte government spent the first

five years accommodating china and its demands with respect to the handling of
the south china sea issues but it spent its last year um presenting a formal
resistance to some of china's claims and positions the outcome is of course china
has gained a lot of inroads into the west philippine sea it is operating freely
within the west philippine sea most especially its natural resource exploitation
activities the philippines delayed its offshore hydrocarbon exploration and its
alliance with the united states has also encountered delays particularly the
implementation of the enhanced defense cooperation agreement [Music] i think
that president duterte has a much closer personal relationship and friendship
with china than the rest of the government and the filipino people and this is
what led him to always accommodate china and to keep down playing the incidents
in the west philippine sea in the first five years of his administration because
of that china has gotten used to operating in the west philippine sea conducting
its illegal activities militarizing its artificial islands and all these other
activities that it has been doing that has made it harder for the philippines to
push back against these activities and assert its jurisdiction over them i think
that the philippine china relationship under this administration has negatively
impacted the philippine u.s relationship especially when it comes to defense
insecurity it has led to the delay in the implementation of the enhanced defense
cooperation agreement which was intended to enhance our capabilities especially
in self-defense and in the maritime arena it has created some distance between
the philippines and the us and led to doubts as to the reliability of the
philippines as an alliance partner if the alliance continues to be strained we
will not be able to make use of the alliance to protect ourselves even from the
most basic threats to our national security right now the biggest threat that we
are facing of course is the loss of our natural resources in the west philippine
sea we need to be able to leverage the alliance to enable us to defend it more
effectively if we are unable to do so we will lose the west philippine sea far
more quickly we lose all of the access to all of the natural resources there
which are ours by right and we will uh therefore also endanger our future
security whether it's resource security energy security future or food security
that will all be endangered [Music] i think it's very clear that the public did
not agree with the government's initial accommodations of china and china's
position especially its excessive claims in the west philippine sea the public
does not agree with the president's statements especially practically giving up
our rights and resources in the west philippines in favor of china i think that
in its first four or five years the government did not really respond to the
public sentiment and instead continued to accommodate china and even downplay
its actions in the west philippine sea and south china sea but in its final year
perhaps because of the looming elections it changed its tune and its posture and
tried to present a more robust position vis-a-vis china's claims [Music] i
think the one that has been affected most is our natural resource rights the
exercise of those rights and the sustainability of our marine resources in the
west philippine sea this is because the most pervasive activity of the chinese
in the past few years has been the conduct of fishing in our exclusive economic
zone regardless of the fact that it is without our permission and it does not
comply with any laws or regulations that we have issued to manage the fishery
resources our food security has been seriously undermined and possibly threatened
in the first few years of the administration they kept downplaying and
accommodating china's fishing activities in the west philippine sea this led to
hundreds of chinese fishing vessels operating freely there taking out massive
amounts of fish this government did not really act on this until 2021 with the
julian filippi reef incident they did not begin chewing away chinese fishing
vessels from their anchorages in the west philippine sea or try to interfere with
their operations there until last year i think that this has contributed to the
decrease in the catch of our fishermen which we are hearing from them straight
from the communities our fishermen are saying that they're no longer catching
fish in this area and this happens to be corroborated by the recent news that
we're now importing even the most basic food fish like the loongong which used to
be the cheapest fish around but it's now so expensive when you go to the market
this i think are all indications that the fisheries really are now strained or
perhaps on the brink of collapse and this is very important for our food
security it's critical in fact because we know that up to 30 percent perhaps of
our capture fisheries actually come from the west philippine sea and that's
according to our marine scientists and they were responding to the president's
claim that there are not much fish in the west philippine sea for for us to be
concerned about so this really shows that our food security is dependent on the
integrity of the resources in the west philippine sea [Music] there are few
concrete steps that the next government could take to re-energize and revive the
philippine u.s relationship first is to prioritize the implementation of the
enhanced defense cooperation arrangement and to update the terms of reference or
the means of operation of the mutual defense treaty second is to encourage more
american investments especially in the fields of technology electronics cyber as
well as maritime and defense technologies and third is to further improve the
trading relationship between the two countries so that we can have more diverse
options in everything from products to investments so i think those would be key
to ensuring that the philippine u.s relationship stays strong despite all these
setbacks that we've seen in the past couple of years [Music] to address these
challenges the next administration must first move away from the fatalist posture
of the current administration second it must work with its neighbors friends and
allies in order to create a united front against china's excessive and expansive
claims third it must move with these allies and friends to defend the
international order especially international law and the united nations
convention of the sea which establish our rights and entitlements to the in the
south china sea by doing this we should be able to defend against china's
activities in the south china sea such as its illegal fishing and militarization
of the islands and doing so will enable us to influence china's behavior so that
it becomes a more responsible member of the international community one that
respects law and our rights and entitlements in the marine field [Music] to
address this challenge to our food security the government first must strengthen
its efforts to combat illegal and reported and unregulated fishing this is
happening all over the world it is a global problem so many countries are willing
to cooperate in order to address this iu phishing in the south china sea what we
need are better surveillance capabilities and better monitoring of the activities
fishing activities in the south china sea including the west philippine sea then
we need to also strengthen our law enforcement activities in the west philippine
sea to at least discourage this excessive overfishing and ultimately control it
keep it down to a sustainable level that will also entail us allowing our own
fishermen to be able to fish for their subsistence as well as continue to fish
for their own livelihoods i think that this depends on the next administration
being able to leverage the international community to help us try to address this
really serious international problem of iu fishing