Resolution eyed to compel EDCA submission to Senate

MANILA, Philippines - Faced with a dilemma that Malacañang will not transmit the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) to the Senate, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago yesterday said she would ask her colleagues to adopt a resolution that will express the view that the agreement needs concurrence.

Santiago said the Senate is left with the option to express its sense on the EDCA since the Palace has considered the agreement enforced even without Senate concurrence.

“The Senate resolution will be able to manifest before the Supreme Court what are the attitudes of the Senate as a collectivity and it will also convey to the President the sense of commitment of various senators to the EDCA,” she said.

The recommendation was also pushed forward by former senator Rene Saguisag during the hearing of the Senate foreign relations committee chaired by Santiago yesterday.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin meanwhile said the EDCA between the US and the Philippines has been a deterrent against Chinese invasion in the country.

Gazmin told the Senate committee conducting a hearing on the validity of the defense pact that mutual capacity building was reaffirmed in the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in 1999 where joint training activities were allowed to be temporarily implemented in Philippine territory.

“As provided in the EDCA are operational matters and necessary details in the conduct of training and exercises. Therefore, EDCA with greater clarity addresses the operational requirements for more effective implementation of the exercises,” Gazmin said.

He added that because of the agreement, China had not been very aggressive against the Philippines, citing that there have been no reports of skirmishes on Ayungin Shoal recently.

Meanwhile, the US government has committed to help the Philippines in terms of defending its territory but only after the move has passed through its own constitutional processes, according to Gazmin.

He reiterated the US government’s ironclad commitment to the Philippines in the wake of the Senate foreign relations committee’s scrutiny of the EDCA.

Gazmin made the statement after Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. asked to what extent will the US government protect and help the Philippines against its aggressors, including China.

Prior to this, Santiago also asked a categorical question on how the EDCA can benefit the Philippines if Chinese forces attack a Philippine ship, whether it be civilian or military, at the disputed West Philippine Sea.

Congress nod needed

When asked if it meant that the US can immediately come to the aid of the Philippines, Gazmin reiterated a number of times that such needs to go through a tedious process.

“By that time, lumubog na yung barko. Ang gusto natin kaagad-agad na meron sanang magtanggol. How long will those processes take?” Santiago asked.

Santiago also found odd the Palace’s statements that the President is ready to face impeachment for pushing for the agreement with US President Barrack Obama without the Philippine Senate’s approval.

“To say that the President is amenable to impeachment because he did not get the concurrence for the EDCA might be too far, but the point remains – he should have given that EDCA to the Senate,” she said. “We cannot order the President to send EDCA to the Senate for concurrence. That is not allowed according to the Supreme Court.”

During the hearing, Solicitor General Florin Hilbay maintained that the characterization of the EDCA as an executive agreement “rests on the concept that the President, as commander-in-chief, chief executive and chief architect of foreign relations, has the authority to enter into implementing agreements pursuant to existing treaties.”

The foreign relations committee will issue the sense of the Senate resolution hoping the Palace will be enlightened on the matter, Santiago said after the hearing.

Re-examining MDT

Dean Merlin Magallona of the UP College of Law reiterated yesterday that the EDCA violated Article XVIII, Section 25 of the Constitution which says that foreign military bases, troops or facilities “shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate.”

Under the constitutional mandate, Magallona said the Senate concurrence on a treaty of such nature becomes the constitutional devise by which a treaty in the nature of EDCA may be saved from Article XVIII, Section 25 as a prohibition.

Under the present circumstances, the Senate is confronted with the reality that this constitutional mandate must now apply as a prohibition in the absence of EDCA embodied “in a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate,” the dean said.

“In consideration of these factors, instead of regarding the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) with biblical awe, we should reexamine it instead from the viewpoint of its dubious status in international law and the perspective of its encroachment into our national sovereignty, not from the angle of the so-called implementing treaty theory,” Magallona said.