By TESSA JAMANDRE
VERA Files

International law and constitutional law experts are set to ask the Supreme Court on Wednesday to nullify the three-week-old Archipelagic Baselines Law, barely a month before the May 13 deadline for the Philippine government to submit to the United Nations its claim over its extended continental shelf under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Saying R.A. 9522 "dismembers a portion of the territory of the Philippines, in violation of the Constitution," UP law professors Merlin Magallona and Harry Roque, their students in constitutional law and public international law, and Anakbayan party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros will also ask the tribunal to stop the government from registering and depositing with the UN Secretary General a copy of the law signed by President Arroyo on March 10.

The petitioners said the government should be prevented from depositing the law with the UN because, once deposited, "it becomes immediately binding on the Philippines under international law, and its subsequent constitutional invalidation by (the Supreme Court) cannot anymore undo the irreparable harm."

R.A. 9522 redrew the country’s baselines to comply with the UNCLOS requirements for an "archipelagic state," in the process excluding the disputed Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) and Scarborough Shoal from the main archipelago and classifying them instead of "regimes of islands." The limits of Philippine territory defined in the law will determine the country’s extended continental shelf, which is believed to contain substantial amounts of oil, natural gas, minerals and polymetals.

The 70-page petition to be filed in the Supreme Court named Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya, National Mapping and Resource Information Authority Administrator Diony Ventura and Ambassador Hilario Davide Jr., Permanent Representative to the UN, as respondents. Davide is supposed to deposit R.A. 9522 and the country’s claim over its extended continental shelf with the UN.

The Department of Foreign Affairs’ Center for Maritime and Ocean Affairs (CMOA) has not responded to VERA Files’ request for a comment.

Magallona, Roque, Hontiveros and their co-petitioners said the new law deprives the country of what has been established in historical, legal and scientific terms as part and parcel of its national territory.

The petitioners cited, among others, the controversial 1898 Treaty of Paris which, they said, delineated "a well-defined area of national territory" of the Philippines when it was ceded by Spain to the United States.

They added that the 1900 Treaty of Washington between Spain and the United States included Cagayan, Sulu and Sibutu in Philippine territory, while the 1930 convention between Great Britain and the United States defined the boundary between the Philippines and Northern Borneo.

A mere statutory act—R.A. 9522 in this case—cannot remake a constitutional definition of the national territory, provided in the 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions, according to the petitioners.

Roque also said the scope and breadth of the country’s territory predated the UNCLOS. "How dare Mrs. Arroyo give away this territory to the detriment of the Filipino people," he said.

The petitioners argued that the UNCLOS does not compel the Philippines to categorize itself as an archipelagic state or to draw the baselines for such a state on or before May 13 this year. The May 13 deadline pertains only to the submission of the extended continental shelf which, they said, can be drawn from the established baselines.

An archipelagic state under the UNCLOS makes use of the straight baselines method to delineate the national territory. This entails drawing straight lines connecting the outermost points of the outermost islands following the general contour of the archipelago.

The petitioners said, however, R.A. 9522 "radically revised" the definition of the Philippine archipelago under the Treaty of Paris. "The result is a roughly triangular delineation which excludes large areas of waters within the 600 miles by 1,200 miles rectangle enclosing the ‘Philippine archipelago’ as defined in the Treaty of Paris," they said.

"Hence, R.A. 9522 constitutes a drastic reduction of Philippine territory and a treasonous surrender of Philippine sovereignty, which is incomprehensible given that the Treaty of Paris has been consistently incorporated in all of our organic charters from the 1935 Constitution up to the present 1987 Constitution," the petitioners said.

Magallona, an expert on the UNCLOS who has argued before the International Court of Justice twice, was quoted in the petition as saying that by declaring the KIG and Scarborough Shoal as regimes of islands, the country has lost 15,000 square nautical miles of territorial waters. Under UNCLOS, a regime of islands consists of islands or naturally formed areas of land surrounded by water that remain above water during high tide.

"By surrendering the above-mentioned territorial waters through the passage of R.A. 9522 excluding the KIG and Scarborough Shoal from the baseline, the State has reneged on its constitutional duty to protect our exclusive marine wealth and the offshore fishing grounds of our subsistence fishermen," the petitioners said.

R.A. 9522 weakened the country’s claim not only over KIG but also over Sabah, they added.