Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said Thursday that President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. respects the Senate’s decision to file a resolution that seeks to raise the Philippines’ arbitral tribunal victory to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

He said this after senators had a “casual” dinner with Marcos, who met with former President Rodrigo Duterte to discuss what he talked about with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In an interview with CNN, Zubiri said: “He’s familiar with it. He knows the stand of the Senate. He knows the stand of the Senate very well. And during the conversation, we just mentioned basically that we had this stand with the Senate.”

“And that’s what we touched very quickly on the issue of former President Duterte and then we change topics after that into agriculture and flooding that’s going on all over Luzon, particularly Northern Luzon, his province Ilocos Sur and, of course, what’s happening in Bulacan and Pampanga. So that’s the gist of the meeting. We didn’t want to impose or discuss anything serious at the time cause this was really for a casual and cordial dinner,” he added

The Upper Chamber earlier adopted Senate Resolution No. 718, which condemns China’s incursions in the West Philippine Sea and the continued harassment of Filipino fishermen.

It combined resolutions No. 659 of Senator Risa Hontiveros and Zubiri’s No. 707.

“There was a bipartisan vote on the issue. And we all voted in favor of the resolution. This resolution is very simple, we’re condemning China for the continued harassment of Filipino fishermen and this persistent incursion into our exclusive economic zone and violations of the decision of the arbitral court which basically grant us the exclusive economic zones in these areas,” he said.

Zubiri said that Marcos told senators that when Duterte met Xi, he told him that China should “look kindly” to its neighbor, the Philippines regarding the issue of the West Philippine Sea.

“That’s the only thing that was shared. Maybe there were other topics that were discussed. It could have been an executive session, so I’m not at liberty to discuss it. The President did not discuss much about it as well,” he said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS