Lacson, Sotto shrug off reported halt of US-PH arms deal
Senators Vicente Sotto III and Panfilo Lacson. INQUIRER FILE PHOTOS
MANILA, Philippines—Saying it’s just one gun store that closed shop to the Philippines, two senators on Tuesday shrugged off the reported halt of an arms deal between the country and its long-standing defense ally the United States as criticism continued to hound the Duterte administration’s human rights record.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said the Philippines could look to manufacturers in other countries to procure firearms, as he urged the defense department to develop the Philippines’ capability to manufacture weapons.
“Since it’s a planned sale of assault rifles by the US to the Philippines, we do not stand to lose anything except one less gun store to choose from. There are tens of other countries that manufacture better and probably cheaper assault rifles than the US,” Lacson said in a statement.
“There is now more reason for our Department of National Defense to revive our self-reliance program so we can produce our own weapons and ammunition and other military hardware,” he added.
Majority Leader Sen. Vicente Sotto III did not mince words when reached for comment and said: “Ayaw nila eh ‘di huwag! (If they don’t want to, fine!)”
He cited how the US has been vocally criticizing drug-related deaths in the Philippines, when America’s neighboring Mexico was having it worse. Drug cartels are known to be behind tens of thousands of killings in Mexico; in the Philippines, the spate of drug deaths began amid the state’s fierce campaign against the illicit trade.
“They should just sell to extremists if they don’t want to sell [arms] to us,” Sotto said.
A Reuters report said the US State Department was keen to stop the sale of up to 27,000 assault rifles to the Philippines after US Sen. Ben Cardin, a member of the Senate foreign relations committee, expressed his intent to oppose the sale over reported human rights violations since President Rodrigo Duterte took over.
The development made apparent yet another crack in the long-standing Philippines-US ties, which has seen a seeming turnaround since Duterte told off, in foul language, US criticism of his anti-drug war.
President Duterte has said he is bent on deviating from the Philippines’ heavy reliance on the US, and that he hopes to stop joint military exercises between American and Filipino troops in two years. RAM
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