Senate to conduct 2 separate hearings on EDCA

MANILA, Philippines - The Senate is set to conduct two separate public hearings on the recently signed Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) between the Philippines and the United States.

The committee on national defense and security, headed by Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, would conduct the first hearing on Tuesday.

Based on the referral made in plenary on the resolution filed by Trillanes calling for the hearing, the committee on foreign relations would be the secondary committee for the inquiry.

However, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who heads the committee on foreign relations, has insisted that she would hold her own hearing on the EDCA that would be separate from that of the defense committee.

Santiago has written Trillanes informing him about her decision to conduct her own hearing on the EDCA, which she said is allowed under the rules of the Senate.

She suggested that they delineate the areas of the EDCA that their respective committees would take up during their hearings.

“In order that our committee hearings on EDCA will not overlap, I respectfully recommend a division of labor: Defense will inquire into the military and political strategy involved; while the foreign relations will inquire into the constitutional issues,” Santiago said in her letter dated yesterday.

Trillanes and Santiago hold conflicting positions on the EDCA, with the former fully supportive of the claim of the executive branch that it is only an executive agreement.

Santiago, on the other hand, believes the EDCA is a treaty and as such must be sent to the Senate for its concurrence before it could become effective.

According to Santiago, the EDCA is an important agreement, considering that this was taken up in the context of maritime threats made by China against the Philippines so two minor officials alone should not have signed it.

“An agreement signed by a defense secretary and a US ambassador should not be the new normal. It should be declared abnormal, because of the particular importance of the EDCA in the context of our Constitution,” she said.

Santiago, in what she described as an exercise in enlightened speculation, said that the EDCA is in danger of being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court if ever someone decides to file a petition against it.

She said that three provisions of the Constitution were violated by the EDCA, the first of which states: “No treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective unless concurred in by at least two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.”

The second provision cited by Santiago states: “After the expiration in 1991 of the Agreement between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of American concerning Military Bases, foreign military bases, troops, or facilities, shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate.”

The third provision states: “The Philippines, consistent with the national interest, adopts and pursues a policy of freedom from nuclear weapons in its territory.”

“The government would have a hard time convincing the justices that this is constitutional. And if this is declared unconstitutional, this would be very embarrassing. That is what we get for rushing this,” Santiago said in Filipino.

Santiago also cited Article 46 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which provides that if a state’s consent to be bound by a treaty has been expressed in violation of its constitution, the state may invoke that violation as a ground for invaliding its consent, if the violation was manifest and concerned a rule of internal law of fundamental importance.

No date has been set for the hearing of the foreign relations committee and according to Santiago, she would call it as soon as her chronic fatigue syndrome allows her to do this.