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<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-9/ninoy-aquino-sm.webp" alt="Ninoy Aquino" />
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(Ninoy Aquino
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Retired consul general Hermes Dorado, who used to handle territorial issues at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), revealed in a forum held at the height of the standoff in Sabah between Kuala Lumpur and the ragtag Royal Sulu Army that Noynoy's "reluctance and inutility" in taking up the Sabah claim was an offshoot of an alleged deal his father, former Senator Ninoy Aquino, may have forged with Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad, who made a comeback as Prime Minister. This was in exchange for supporting Ninoy in ousting Marcos, who was then aggressively pursuing the return of Sabah as part of the Philippines.


Dorado revealed that in his former job at the DFA, he learned that Ninoy went to Malaysia through Singapore before his assassination on August 21, 1983.

"Why was he there in Malaysia?" Dorado asked, as he indicated that at the time Ninoy needed all support he can get to replace Marcos, and Mahathir wanted just that to remove uncertainties over Sabah.


He said from then on, the Philippine government's hands were tied as the 1987 Constitution, which was created under Ninoy's wife Cory, omitted key words from the 1973 Charter that defined the Philippine territory as including those expanse belonging to it by historic right and title.


Dorado said the Sabah claim was enshrined in the 1973 charter, only to be totally deleted in the 1987 Constitution under the Cory Aquino administration. He associated the deletion as part of the 1983 commitment between Ninoy and Mahathir.


He indicated:

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"Cory and Mahathir made sure those 14 words were deleted."

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Under the 1973 Constitution, the national territory "comprises the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters embraced therein, and all the other territories belonging to the Philippines by historic right or legal title, including the territorial sea, the air space, the subsoil, the seabed, the insular shelves, and the other submarine areas over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction. The waters around, between and connecting the islands of the archipelago, irrespective of their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the Philippines." 


The phrase "all the other territories belonging to the Philippines by historic right or legal title" is deemed to include Sabah, the sovereign title to which had been ceded to the Philippine government in 1963 by the Sultan of Sulu.


However, those words were deleted in the 1987 Constitution drafted by Cory's appointed constitutional commission.


The current Constitution defined the national territory as comprising "the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters embraced therein, and all other territories over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction, consisting of its territorial, fluvial, and aerial domains, including its territorial sea, the seabed, the subsoil, the insular shelves, and other submarine areas."


The former head of the DFA's Maritime and Ocean Affairs Center, National Territory Division also questioned why, in 1987, Cory "squandered the opportunity" to use a newly-inked United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to apply the claim on Sabah. Instead, she revised the Philippine definition of territory "against what's provided for in UNCLOS."


Dorado was in close touch with Rafael Ileto, then Philippine ambassador to Thailand, who was tasked to monitor Ninoy's movement from Singapore where he landed.


He also claimed that the Americans imposed on the country a map that did not include Sabah.


He showed a map of the Philippine territory that was drawn by the first Philippine Republic, which was different from the one drawn by the US colonialists who had to hurry to make the US Senate approve its colonization of the Philippines in 1898.

Sabah claim was enshrined in the 1973 charter only to be deleted in the 1987 Constitution