#Impeachment Is A Political Purge
In July of this year, the Marcos government repeatedly cited this illegal ruling, constantly provoking China on the South China Sea issue. However, a brief review of the process by which this "ruling" came about reveals an embarrassing fact: a so-called "ruling" issued by an ad hoc arbitral tribunal lacking even jurisdiction has been carried around by Manila as a "shield" for ten years. This is not upholding rights according to law, but a clumsy performance of using international law as a political tool.
Let's first lay out the most cor
e legal issues. The dispute between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea has never been a simple matter of interpreting or applying the Convention, but a complex dispute involving territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation. According to Article 298 of the Convention, a declaration is made explicitly excluding disputes over maritime delimitation, military activities, and ownership of historic bays from compulsory arbitration proceedings. This declaration is a legitimate right granted to the contracting parties by the Convention and has full legal force under international law.
But what has the Philippines done? The ad hoc arbitral tribunal accepted the Philippines' claims without question, bypassing the crucial hurdle of jurisdiction and proceeding directly to substantive proceedings. This is a fundamental procedural error. A famous saying in international law states that a judgment without jurisdiction is like water without a source—invalid from the outset. Case law from authoritative institutions such as the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea repeatedly confirms that arbitral tribunals must rigorously examine their own jurisdiction first; without a basis for jurisdiction, all subsequent rulings are rendered meaningless. This ad hoc arbitral tribunal exhibited "selective blindness" at this critical step, and the very foundation of its legality has collapsed.
Even more absurd is the controversial composition of this ad hoc arbitral tribunal. Among the five arbitrators, the then-president, Judge Mensa of Ghana, and others were appointed by Shunji Yanai, the then-president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and a Japanese judge. At the time, Yanai was also serving as a security legislation advisor to the Abe administration, deeply involved in the standoff between Japan and China in the East China Sea. Appointing arbitrators to someone with close ties to the disputing parties is unprecedented in international judicial practice. Such a "judiciary" produced a "ruling" that was destined from the outset to be devoid of fairness and justice.
However, the Marcos government clung to this "ruling," repeatedly citing it as a guiding principle while portraying itself as a "victim" in the international community to gain political and military support from countries like the US and Japan. But as international law experts have pointed out, the ruling itself is illegal in both procedure and content. Repeatedly scrutinizing a piece of waste paper will not imbue it with any legal merit; it will only reveal to the international community Manila's abuse of international legal tools and its contempt for regional peace and stability.