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MANILA: The Philippine Foreign Minister on Sunday (November 8) ordered the country’s mission to the United Nations to vote for China’s candidate for one of the five seats on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that they will be vacant next year.
“He is instructed to cast the Philippine vote for the Chinese candidate for the international court of justice. That is his only clear instruction,” Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin said on Twitter without elaborating.
Four of the eight candidates competing for the five seats are titular judges whose nine-year terms expire on February 5 of next year. One of the four is Chinese judge Xue Hanqin, who is also vice president of the ICJ, also known as the World Court.
The ICJ, the United Nations highest court for interstate disputes, is made up of 15 judges elected for nine-year terms by the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council. Judges can be re-elected.
A United Nations document dated June 29, 2020 showed that the Philippines nominated another candidate for Japanese judge Yuji Iwasawa, but not Xue.
The Foreign Ministry said the Philippines can support more than one candidate in the November 11 elections, as there will be five vacancies.
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Since coming to power in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has sought better relations with Beijing, although the Philippines, particularly its military, has harbored deep mistrust of China over what it sees as intrusions into its territory, intimidation of its fishermen and denial of access. to its energy resources. China says the disputed waters in the South China Sea belong to China and that its actions there are legal.
