SC tackles Edca, Grace Poe Wednesday

THE SUPREME Court is set to tackle critical petitions when it holds a special en banc session today, including pleas questioning the constitutionality of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) and the suit against the Senate Electoral Tribunal’s (SET) ruling upholding the citizenship of presidential aspirant Sen. Grace Poe.

The militant group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), among petitioners in the case, is set to hold a vigil outside the high court’s gates today as magistrates vote on the Edca, an agreement between the Philippines and the United States that would allow greater rotational presence of US troops in the country.

In a statement, Bayan called on the Supreme Court to uphold national sovereignty and junk Edca as unconstitutional, saying declaring it valid would reverse the Senate’s 1991 decision to get rid of US bases in the country.

“It will open the floodgates to US troops, facilities, ships and planes that can be stationed in the Philippines without limit,” Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. said in a statement.

Separate petitions filed by Bayan, and former Senators Rene Saguisag and Wigberto Tañada, among 12 senators who voted in 1991 to kick out the US military bases in the country, asked the high court last year to throw out the pact, saying it was unfair to the Philippines.

Reyes reiterated the petitioners’ position that Edca would allow de facto basing of American forces here, and that it breaches the requirement for Senate concurrence in any international agreement.

“The Edca allows for the use of Philippine military facilities rent-free and tax-free. It is, in effect, indefinite. It will convert the entire country into a US military outpost that serves US intervention in the region,” said Reyes.

“We call on the Filipino people to be vigilant and oppose the increasing US intervention in our country and in the Asia- Pacific region. The Edca is not the key to securing our claims in the West Philippine Sea. The Philippines must develop its own capacity in standing up versus China’s incursions and island-grabbing,” he said.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and US Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg signed the executive agreement in April last year, just before the state visit of US President Barack Obama in Manila.

The two nations, long-standing defense allies and strategic partners, signed the pact just as the US pursued its pivot to the Asia-Pacific, and the Philippines built up external defense amid China’s aggressive expansion in the disputed South China Sea.