MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is not seeking a new agreement with the United States that would replace the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) that President Rodrigo Duterte terminated on Feb. 11, and he has not approved any move to do so, presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said on Sunday.

Panelo said any claim that the country was seeking a new VFA “does not have the President’s blessing,” referring to the revelation of the country’s ambassador to the United States, Jose Manuel Romualdez, that he and US Ambassador Sung Kim were studying options for a new agreement.

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“I talked to Ambassador Romualdez [and] he denied that. He’s [merely] saying that they are just studying the other agreements, the pros and cons for our country,” Panelo said in an interview over dzIQ.

“It might be the initiative of Ambassador Romualdez’s counterparts. They are the ones affected, so they would be the ones to initiate better suggestions,” he said.

“Even assuming it’s true, that’s just a mere recommendation to the President. But the President’s position remains unchanged. He still wants the VFA out. He wants us to be self-reliant.”

VFA with Australia stays

But Panelo clarified that the country’s only other VFA, that with Australia in 2007, will remain in force unless there is a compelling reason for the President to do otherwise.

“The pending military agreements with other countries will continue because there is no reason for the President to terminate that now,” he said.

Other proposed VFAs

“The ones pending with Australia and Japan [sic], the President won’t touch those. Unless there is a reason compelling him to do so. That’s up to the President, the compelling reason will depend on the President. That’s his call. It’s always based on national interest and general welfare,” he added.

The country has no VFA with Japan but the military and defense establishment has, for years, stressed the need for it in view of Tokyo’s sincere and repeated assistance in security affairs.

Armed Forces chief of staff Gen. Felimon Santos Jr. also told senators recently that the military and defense establishment would be interested in forging visiting forces pacts with Indonesia and even China so long as the terms were equitable.

That was also the view of Iloilo Rep. Raul Tupas, chair of the House committee on defense and security, who said negotiations for talks for a new VFA, particularly with the United States, must carry the guarantees of a real treaty.

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“Let us get it right this time around,” Tupas said. “We should have a Visiting Forces Treaty, a real treaty ratified by the Senate of the Philippines and Senate of the United States.”

Tupas noted that the US Senate never officially consented to the 1999 VFA and could not be considered a treaty under the 1987 Constitution.

End the colonial mentality

“Let us learn from the lessons of these past decades,” he said, stressing that any new deal “should be a treaty between equal sovereign states, far removed from the relationship status of former colonizer and former colonized with excess baggage from World War II, the Vietnam War and the Cold War.”

Tupas said the talks should also serve as an opportunity to set the stage for the replacement of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) with a “much better treaty attuned to the current and emerging realities in national, regional and global security.”

Separate from the VFA, the 1951 MDT between the Philippines and the United States said that the two countries will “act to meet the common dangers” in the event of an armed attack in the Pacific on either of the parties in accordance with constitutional processes.

Tupas also reminded his colleagues that “while the Senate has the power of treaty concurrence, the House of Representatives has the power of the purse.”

“It is incumbent upon us in the House to make sure our public funds are spent on military engagements with the United States or any other sovereign state are devoted to upholding our Constitution and national interests for all generations of Filipinos,” he said.

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