West Philippine Sea territorial commitment renewed as parties who disagree on ownership both agree on coordinates

Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

The Statement and Its Audience

MANILA — President Marcos issued a firm commitment this week that the Philippines will not allow loss of control over Bajo de Masinloc, known internationally as Scarborough Shoal, a reef and fishing ground in the South China Sea that Philippine fishermen have historically used, that Chinese coast guard vessels have been blocking access to since 2012, and that the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling confirmed falls within Philippine rights under international law, which China does not recognise, which the Philippines cannot enforce unilaterally, and which the United States has committed to defending under mutual defence treaty terms that have not been directly tested.

The commitment was issued from the Palace, which is located in Manila, which is approximately 220 kilometres from Bajo de Masinloc, which is the same distance it has always been, and at which distance the commitment is made with the full authority of the Philippine state and received by the parties operating at Bajo de Masinloc with the same response that all commitments issued from 220 kilometres have received since 2012, which is the Chinese coast guard continuing to operate as before.

The Mutual Defence Treaty and Its Application

The Philippines-US Mutual Defence Treaty, signed in 1951, has been interpreted by successive US administrations as applying to Philippine vessels and armed forces in the South China Sea, a position that the Biden administration clarified explicitly and that the current US administration has reiterated while also pursuing separate trade and investment discussions with China that create a different kind of diplomatic complexity. The Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines described China’s sanctions on Defense Secretary Teodoro as an unfriendly act that further complicates bilateral relations, which is the diplomatic language for what it is, stated with the precision that diplomatic language uses when it wants to be clear without being impolite.

The International Court of Justice is not involved in the current phase of the dispute. The Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2016 ruling remains in force legally and without operational effect practically. The fishermen of the municipality of Masinloc continue to have a specific relationship with the shoal that predates all of the above by several centuries and that the legal documents, the patrol vessels, and the diplomatic statements are all, in their different ways, trying to address. The shoal is still there. The fish are still there. The coast guard vessels are still there. The commitment was issued. The distance was the same.

The Broader Pattern

The story above is one entry in the long-running Philippine political serial that analysts describe as a system demonstrating its characteristic resilience and that citizens describe as the same thing with a different adjective. The resilience is real: Philippine democracy has survived coups, martial law, impeachment proceedings, and a sustained period of extrajudicial killings, and continues to hold elections that produce results that are both contested and consequential. The characteristic adjective that citizens apply reflects the experience of living inside the resilience rather than observing it from outside, which produces a different relationship to the word. The satire attempts to hold both relationships simultaneously, which is the only honest position available.

The Philippine News Agency continues to provide official coverage. The Philippine Daily Inquirer continues to provide independent coverage. The satirical sites continue to provide coverage that is technically fictional and functionally accurate, which is the specific contribution of satire to political discourse in a country where the gap between official statements and observable reality is wide enough to require a form of communication that can acknowledge both without being prosecuted for acknowledging either.

The View From Here

Philippine political life in 2026 has the specific character of a country that is simultaneously too much to follow and impossible to stop following, because each week produces developments that connect to previous weeks in ways that were not predictable from any single week but that, in retrospect, make complete sense as expressions of structural conditions that are older than the current administration, older than the current constitution, and in some cases as old as the Philippine political family as the organising unit of everything from barangay councils to presidential dynasties. The satirist and the analyst arrive at the same observation: the system produces predictable outcomes through unpredictable means, and the unpredictability is what makes it news and the predictability is what makes it worth understanding.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Manila Times continue to provide the documentation that this column requires to function. The documentation continues to be extraordinary. Manila continues to be extraordinary. The satire continues to be unnecessary, in the sense that the reality continues to provide material that satire can only annotate rather than improve.

That is the story this week. Next week will have a different story. The story after that will be different again. The through-line will be the same, because the through-line is the Philippine political system, which is old and complicated and always producing new events along the same structural tracks, and which the satire cannot exhaust because the system cannot exhaust itself, and which the documentation cannot complete because the documentation is of something that is still happening, and which is therefore always incomplete, and which is therefore always worth returning to, week after week, in the specific Manila way that means being astonished by the same things for reasons that are new each time.

More absurdity at https://clickhole.com.

SOURCE: Satirical Journalism