‘Phl security more important than possible legal infirmities in EDCA’
MANILA, Philippines - The country’s security should have preeminence over possible legal and technical infirmities in the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the United States, the Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa) said yesterday.
Retired justice Manuel Lazaro and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, chairman and president of Philconsa, respectively, issued separate statements on the EDCA at the group’s membership meeting Thursday night in Makati City where US Ambassador Philip Goldberg was the guest speaker.
Goldberg expressed optimism the Supreme Court would declare EDCA constitutional after some groups sought its scrapping.
Lazaro said some sectors have been asking Philconsa’s position on the matter.
“Anything that goes for securing the country will supersede any other technical and legal infirmities that it may seemingly pose. The ultimate goal of the Constitution is to secure the nation, anything that lends to that, we’re supportive,” Romualdez said.
“At the end of the day, the Philconsa is for protecting and defending the Constitution, the Constitution talks about securing the Filipino people, anything that enhances this ability we are supportive of,” he said.
He said Goldberg raised convincing arguments regarding the importance of EDCA to both countries.
Lazaro said to question EDCA for alleged violation of Section 25, Article 18 of the Constitution prohibiting foreign military bases, troops or facilities, except under a treaty concurred to by the Senate, “is to sire a constitutional collision with the imminent or cardinal duty of the government and its citizens to secure the sovereignty of the State and the integrity of its national territory.”
Goldberg said the EDCA simply allows increased rotational presence of US troops in the country in an arrangement that is already allowed under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty and the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement.
He also said the EDCA would help the Philippines build a minimum credible defense capability in the light of increasing foreign intrusions in the West Philippine Sea.
“The reason it took eight months and eight rounds of formal and informal negotiations is because we have a concern in issues regarding sovereignty in the Philippines,” Goldberg said.
“We wanted to make sure that it would meet the constitutional requisites, to make sure that it would hold up to scrutiny, legally and politically,” he said.
He said the joint military activities, which include humanitarian operations, would “be determined through mutual consent at locations and at sizes that are mutually beneficial and to be decided together through the Mutual Defense Board, through discussions. Nothing will be done without the consent of the Philippine government.”
The agreement is “mutually beneficial” and “one that won’t go forward unless we both agree,” the US diplomat said.
“It’s one that doesn’t create new bases, it creates the ability for the United States to be present here on rotational basis,” he said.
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