ice President Maria Leonor Robredo, along with Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon and Senators Panfilo Lacson and Francis Pangilinan, has opposed a joint inquiry with China into the Recto (Reed) Bank incident in the South China (West Philippine) Sea, days after she held a dialogue with and provided aid to the fishers who were rammed by a Chinese vessel and were left afloat at sea. In her weekly radio show on Sunday, Robredo said a multilateral investigation would be better to allow a third party to come up with unbiased results. “I am not confident with this proposal because the primary issue here is we are the ones being bullied. That is the reason why we are not confident with bilateral talks. What we want is multilateral, a third party is involved… someone that is not part of the problem and can investigate without biases,” she added.

Jalea, G. & Tamayo, B. E. (2019, June 24). VP, senators oppose joint probe of Recto ramming