MANILA, Philippines — When public school teacher Lucky Gaea Marie Bolante was deployed to Pag-asa Island, finding a spouse was the last thing on her mind.
Then came Philippine Air Force Airman 2nd Class Clyde Kent Enriquez.
Bolante and Enriquez met when the former was just deployed to the island as a teacher last year. Enriquez, on the other hand, has been stationed on the island since 2022.
“We just met along the road,” Enriquez told reporters in an interview over the weekend. “She is strict looking.”
READ: West Philippine Sea: Large fleet of Chinese ships seen in Pagasa Island
Bolante said: “I have no plans of having a boyfriend, but he is persistent.”
The couple said they are set to exchange vows this December, and no less than Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro will serve as one of the wedding sponsors.
Bolante and Enriquez’s love story became the sidebar of Teodoro’s visit to Pag-asa Island, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the landmark 2016 Arbitral Award which effectively invalidated China’s sweeping nine-dash-line claim in the South China Sea.
Teodoro said that, “other than purely security perspective,” the government is also finding ways to make the island more habitable for its residents.
Bolante and Enriquez are among the some 500 locals, troops, law enforcers and civilian government personnel who call Pag-asa Island home.
Having had effective occupation and control over it, Manila asserts sovereignty within the 12 nautical miles territorial sea of Pag-asa Island, which is beyond the western section of the country’s exclusive economic zone.
The seat of government of the Kalayaan municipality regularly sees the presence of Chinese ships, sometimes even entering inside its territorial sea. /das
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