‘Rock Solid’—history as film thriller - Institute for Maritime and Ocean Affairs

Marites D. Vitug’s new book, “Rock Solid: How the Philippines Won Its Maritime Case Against China,” tells the story like a film thriller.

It begins in three time zones on July 12, 2016, the day of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) decision. Waiting for the
5 a.m. e-mail from The Hague was the law firm retained by the Philippines in Washington, DC.

Waiting with them late afternoon in Manila were Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, progenitor of the case and its champion, former DFA secretary Albert del Rosario and Benigno Aquino III, two weeks after his term as President ended.

Three years back, he resolved intense Cabinet debate between pros and antis. Deciding to file the case “because it’s right,” his government’s question to the ICJ’s Arbitration Tribunal was: Who has sovereign rights over these islets, now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t rocks, atolls and reefs west of the Philippines?

When The Hague e-mail finally broke the news of “overwhelming victory” for the country, faces beamed like the sun suddenly out in the typhoon season of the Duterte government.

A flashback to nearly half a century backdrops the ICJ decision’s global significance. It’s 1967 and Arvid Pardo, United Nations representative of the tiny island republic of Malta, is giving an impassioned speech at the UN General Assembly. Shifting its gaze to “the seabed and ocean floor (that) constitute nearly three-quarters of the land area of the earth,” he declared: “Oceans are the earth’s womb of life.”

Prevalent legal chaos at sea, with countries fighting over territorial waters and fishing rights, gave Pardo’s warning a sharp edge: “Some countries may be tempted to use their technical competence to achieve near-unbreakable world dominance through control over the seabed and ocean floor.”

A year after that prophecy, the UN formed a commission “to study the seabed, anchored on philosophical thinking that the resources of the deep sea are the common heritage of man,” Vitug writes.

“China, not yet a global power, aligned itself with the developing countries… a leading voice in demanding a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), where the coastal state had exclusive sovereign rights,” she continues.