The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Wednesday welcome the Supreme Court (SC) order directing ranking military and defense officials to answer a petition seeking to stop joint exercises between the Filipino and Japanese militaries.
The latter was filed by the Alliance of Concern Teachers
(ACT) party-list last month.
Named respondents in the petition are President Benigno
Aquino 3rd, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, Executive Secretary Paquito
Ochoa Jr., AFP chief-of-staff Lt. Gen Hernando Iriberri and Navy
flag-officer-in-command Vice Admiral Jesus C. Millan.
ACT argued that the respondents committed grave abuse of
discretion when they entered into the defense agreements and implemented them
through the conduct of joint military drills in Philippine territory with the
Japanese Self-Defense Forces.
"The Armed Forces, in reaction to the SC directive to
explain (the) Philippine-Japan exercises that were recently conducted,
(welcomes) the opportunity (as) the Armed Forces is actually appreciative of
these kinds of measures to clarify certain activities we conduct with other
countries, it’s a legal issue that the Department of of National Defense is
well aware of and they are preparing to have the explanation brought to the
SC," AFP spokesperson Col. Restituto Padilla said.
"But be that as it may, from the perspective of the
Armed Forces and the Philippine Navy, we believe that the exercises were
conducted with firm basis on our existing policies and laws which will be
clarified thoroughly when we bring this matter up at the SC level during the
session," he added.
Padilla said what is prohibited by the Constitution is the
conduct of actual military exercises in Philippine territory without a formal
treaty.
He added that the June exercises with the Japan Maritime
Self Defense Force was done outside Philippine territory.
These involved a Japanese Lockheed P-3 "Orion" and
Philippine Navy Island patrol aircraft.
These drills involved maritime search-and-rescue training which
began June 22 and ended on the 24th.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=787405
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.