Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro “Teddyboy” Locsin Jr. on Monday, November 26, said that the document presented by Senator Antonio Trillanes IV which details the joint oil and gas exploration deal between China and the Philippines may only have been written by one of the senator’s staff.
In an interview with ANC, Locsin denied the authenticity of the document saying that he has no idea where Trillanes got the document.
“How can I response to non-sense? It’s not even a draft. It may have been written by Trillanes’ staff. I can’t respond… I’m dealing with a foreign power. He’s dealing with a staff member,” Locsin said.
Locsin was referring to the document Trillanes presented claiming that the two countries will “conduct joint oil and gas exploration in relevant sea areas in the South China Sea” with “mutual respect, fairness and mutual benefit, flexibility and pragmatism, and consensus.”
Locsin added that the only deal signed by the two countries is the Memorandum of Agreement on the Oil and Gas Development.
“It was waived to me… I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s like a 16-point large, this big, three spaces between and there were pointers… and said, ‘Chinese…’ I just put it aside because I’m trained in Angara law office to look at memorandum of agreements in a certain way,” Locsin said.
The Memorandum of Agreement on the Oil and Gas Development was one of the deals signed during Chinese president Xi Jinping’s two-day state visit to the country.
