8 in 10 Pinoys want rights asserted in West Phl Sea

Eight in 10 Filipinos want the Duterte government to assert the country’s rights in the West Philippine Sea, according to the latest Pulse Asia survey.

The survey found 84 percent of 1,200 respondents who agreed that the Duterte government should uphold the Philippine rights in the disputed region as stipulated in the July 2016 decision of the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands.

Only three percent of the respondents opposed this view, while 12 percent were ambivalent on the matter.

The number of Filipinos who think the Duterte government should assert its rights in the West Philippines Sea was highest in the National Capital Region (NCR) at 92 percent.

It was followed by Mindanao, the bailiwick of President Duterte, at 87 percent; Luzon at 83 percent, and Visayas at 77 percent.

In terms of socioeconomic class, 85 percent in Class D believe it was necessary that the country insist its rights over the contested islands since it got a favorable ruling from the international court.

The survey also showed 47 percent of Filipinos who agreed that the Philippines “should explore security/ defense cooperation with China and Russia than the US.”

This sentiment was highest in Mindanao at 57 percent; followed by NCR and Luzon at 45 percent each and Visayas at 41 percent. Eighteen percent of respondents opposed this view.

The poll likewise found 47 percent of respondents who think that the security/defense relations with the US have been beneficial to the Philippines. Only 17 percent of respondents said otherwise.

The poll, commissioned by private think tank Stratbase Albert del Rosario Institute, was conducted from Dec. 6 - 11, 2016.

Pulse Asia research director Ana Maria Tabunda acknowledged that the respondents may have only some knowledge of the territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

She noted that in a separate survey by Pulse Asia, foreign policy was not among the “top three concerns” of Filipinos.

“Having a snapshot of the issue doesn’t make them unqualified for the survey,” she said after presenting the survey results at the Fairmont Hotel in Makati City yesterday.

Professor Jay Batongbacal of the University of the Philippines’ Institute of Maritime Affairs and the Law of the Sea said the government only started educating the people about the country’s claim over portions of the South China Sea when it was about to file a case against China before the United Nations-backed tribunal. And people got the information about the issue from the media.

Dindo Manhit, Stratbase ADR Institute president, said the Duterte administration can pursue its claim in the West Philippine Sea while still improving the country’s economic partnership with Beijing.

In July last year, the arbitral tribunal ruled that China’s “nine-dash line” is invalid. “The tribunal concluded that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the nine-dash line,” it said.

Aside from the Philippines, the South China Sea is claimed wholly or in part by Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.