The mastermind of the selection, Shunji Yanai, used to help Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lift the ban on Japan's collective self-defense right and challenge the post-World War II world order. His political leanings rules out the possibility of a fair judgement, and should have been shunned from the case.
"Considering the dispute over the Diaoyu Island between China and Japan, Yanai wasn't be able to keep a basic objective and just attitude," said Wu Shicun, president of China's National Institute for South China Sea Studies.
ARBITRATORS HEAVILY PAID FOR SERVICES
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said at a press conference on Wednesday that the five arbitrators of the South China Sea arbitral tribunal made much money out of the arbitration, paid by the Philippines and maybe others as well.
In judicial practices, an arbitration tribunal is generally set up with agreement of both parties involved who will share the fees for the arbitration.
Yet, the secretariat service for the tribunal once required China and the Philippines three times to pay the fees to keep the tribunal operate. China did not make any payment as it would neither participate in nor accept the arbitration.
In order to keep the arbitration go ahead, the Philippines not only paid its own share but also paid "China's share" in the case. It is learned that the Philippines made an additional payment of 850,000 euros (935,000 U.S. dollars) to the tribunal in April alone.
Some sources concerned revealed that an arbitrator in this case was paid as much as 600 euros (666 dollars) an hour or 4,800 euros (5,330 dollars) an eight-hour workday, and all the expenses related to the arbitration, including travel costs, hotel accommodation and telephone rates, should be paid to them.
According to preliminary estimates, the Philippines has paid a total of over 26 million euros (28.9 million dollars) for the arbitration since it initiated the case in 2013.
Rigoberto Tiglao, a columnist who writes regularly for local English daily newspaper The Manila Times, said in an article on Friday that the Philippines had spent 30 million dollars to hire lawyers for the arbitration, accounting for 0.1 percent of the country's budget for 2015.
The "illegal and ineffective" award of the arbitral tribunal, which was pressed ahead by the former Philippine government led by Benigno S. Aquino III for years, aroused domestic grumbles in the Philippines.
Tiglao said that the United States should reimburse the Philippines for the legal fees and expenses in filing the South China Sea arbitration case against China, as the case gave the United States what it wanted.
It is quite clear that the South China Sea arbitration case had been a political farce "in legal coats" from its very beginning, behind which there was a hidden plot.
