Category: vfa

pakikiramay

Asked at a foreign correspondents’ forum on Wednesday if he was following Vice President Jejomar Binay’s lead and go to Laude’s wake, Mr. Aquino replied: “In general, I don’t attend wakes of people I don’t know. I’m uncomfortable with trying to condole with people who don’t know me. How can I say that I really sympathize with them by trying to assuage their loss at that point?” 

kung hindi nauna na si vp binay sa pakikiramay in person sa pamilyang laude sa olongapo, would the president have replied in the same manner?  maybe not.  and then, again, who knows.  we have a president who doesn’t seem to care much about his public relations, really, as though he didn’t need pogi points at all, if not for himself (six more years?), then for the liberal party’s annointed (six more years nga).

tulad ng sabi ni benjamin pimentel: Aquino didn’t have to go to the wake but …

A citizen of his country has been murdered. The suspect is a member of an ally’s military force. It’s an ally he may need as he takes on a bully in the region. But that bully, China, is pushing hard to paint him (and the Philippines) as nothing more than a US stooge, a puppet of Washington. And at home, there are those who also see Aquino as incapable for embracing a path independent of Washington, a leader whose vaunted courage in taking on a regional bully is based on nothing more than a foolish hope that the Americans would actually do the fighting for the Philippines.

Showing up at Laude’s wake would have sent the message that Aquino also has the courage to declare that, while he is prepared to take on China, his people’s welfare, especially those of the most vulnerable, is more important than a military alliance with an ally.

Besides, that ally, the United States, known for being the dominant factor in Philippine politics, already sent a strong signal that it wasn’t going to play games just to save a marine accused of murder.

Even before the US Military turned Private Joseph Pemberton over to Philippine authorities, US Secretary of State John Kerry already said: ”Whatever charges there are, whatever infractions have been affected by any American anywhere, we believe in the rule of law, and we believe in our agreement. ….

“The people of the Philippines who are gracious enough to permit an arrangement whereby we meet mutual interests with this kind of a force’s presence need to know that we’re not seeking a special privilege, that everybody’s rights will be appropriately protected.”

Aquino could have affirmed that message himself at Laude’s wake. Unfortunately, PNoy just isn’t comfortable about doing something like that.

Instead of grabbing the chance to reframe the country’s long complicated relationship with the United States, PNoy gets pinged by a clever Facebook post poking fun at his “I-don’t-attend-wakes-of-people-I-don’t know’ statement.

The Facebook post shows a photo of the hundreds of thousands who attended Ninoy Aquino’s funeral in 1983.

“Mahiya ka naman sa tatay mo,” the post says.

gets ko naman na di niya type umeksena sa olongapo given the hysterics of the family — nothing quiet or genteel about them — over u.s. custody of pemberton.  pero di ko gets why he could not even express condolences the way the u.s. ambassador did.  or why he could not send someone in his stead, you know, like kris and/or boy abunda?

Just Jennifer

By Katrina S.S.

It’s been painful, hearing about, and watching the story of, Jennifer Laude’s murder unfold. It is sad enough that there is a murder of any person in the hands of Americans brought onto these shores on “legal business.” But to hear the Philippine President speak of it like it’s a run-of-the-mill death, like it happened in a vacuum, like there is no American Marine as who is the prime suspect, is the height of insensitivity.

Read on…

synchronicity, jails, pemberton’s custody

south africa:  in the sentence hearing of oscar pistorius for culpable homicide in the death of reeva steenkamp, the plea of the defense is that pistorius not be made to spend time in jail, a social worker pointing to overcrowding, drugs, gangs, sodomy and the lack of facilities for disabled prisoners.  says prosecutor nel, a private cell then…

philippines: in the controversy over the custody of US marine scott pemberton in the killing of transgender jennifer laude, it’s okay with VFA  and EDCA supporters that pemberton remain in US custody, given the dismal state of our jails: he could get raped, killed, mauled.

but wait, we, too, have all kinds of jails.  while “innocent until proven guilty” surely we can find him accommodations in the PNP custodial center in camp crame where estrada and revilla are detained, or some similarly safe facility?  call it special treatment, whatever, but it’s far far fairer and more correct having him  in philippine custody where our own police and our own media can keep tabs on him rather than having him mostly hidden in the american embassy a la daniel smith, or on some warship, and shielded from the public eye.

EDCA Primer No. 1 by one of the 1991 Malevolent/Magnificent Twelve? (Updated)

By RENE A.V. SAGUISAG
Work in progress

​Q1:  What is required for an international agreement to be valid?*

A:  Sec. 21 of Art. VII of the Cory Constitution says: “No treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective unless concurred in by at least two-thirds of all the members of the Senate.”

​Q2:  Is the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) constitutional?

A:  Permit me to doubt. Sec. 25 of Art. XVIII of the same Constitution says foreign “troops or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate . . .and recognized as a treaty by the other contracting State.”

​Q3:  How long will the EDCA last?

A:  Thereunder, INITIALLY for ten years but there is automaticity in extensions, so that my apos, eldest not quite six, may be affected.

​EDCA says it ‘shall have an initial terms of ten years, and thereafter, it shall continue to be in force unless terminated by either party by giving one year’s notice through diplomatic channels. . . .”​

​​Q4:  As a member of the Malevolent/Magnificent Twelve who ended ​the presence of foreign troops​​​​ of more than 400 uninterrupted years, you (RAVS) keep saying that EDCA is a rotten egg, can you lay a better one?​

​A:  Let me try. The American should be asked to return the Bells of Balangiga, now in Fort Warren, just outside of Cheyenne, with another in South Korea. These trophies are Catholic Church’s property taken in 1901. Then they should be asked to put troops and facilities in Ayungin and Scarborough in their new bases there. We should be ready to die to the last American.

Q5: Why allow them to use our own bases?

​ A:  They should build their own. In Ayungin, Scarborough, off Batanes, and the like. ​

​Q6: We are weak; can we defend our territory alone?

A: It is a question of heart, as shown by the Vietnamese in defeating the French and the Americans. And the U.S. and Japan will help, if it would be in their national interests to do so. EDCA or no EDCA. No permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. Japan was our foe in WW II when we were one huge military base of the U.S. Japan successfully invaded us anyway.

​​Q7:  But, doesn’t EDCA only implement our Mutual Defense Treaty of 1951?

A:  It is superseded by the 1987 Constitution and both our and American jurisprudence uphold the super-cession theory.

Q​8:  What case law?

A:  E.g., Edye v. Robertson, 122 U.S. 580 (1884) illustrates the view that Congress has the power to override treaty obligations.​ What more with the people ratifying a Constitution? Edye is one of a group of nearly contemporaneous decisions toward the of the 19th century which asserted the supremacy of federal statutes over prior treaties, which have no superior sanctity. H. Steiner and D. Vagst, Transnational Legal Problems 587 (1982, the duo were my team teachers in the subject at Harvard Law in 1967). Our own case law, beginning with Ichong v. Hernandez, 101 Phil 1155 (1957) – all the way to the 2002 case of Mark Jimenez – has language to the same effect but all in the nature of obiter, our Supreme Court having found no conflict between a treaty and the local or municipal law.

Hometown. Where we have a world body or an arbiter, the adjudicators will follow “the cardinal rule that provisions of municipal law cannot prevail over a treaty.” Steiner and Vagst, supra. But our Supreme Court should follow the obiter in Ichong, Garcia, Hechanova and Purganan (Jimenez) in light of our own best national interests.

Q9:  Why be sensitive to the presence of U.S. soldiers?

A: Given the history of abuse from the time Prez McKinley knelt in the White House and was told to Christianize us. The GIs sang Oh, The Monkeys Have no Tails in Zamboanga. Racist. Gen. Smith ordered everyone above ten killed and turn Samar into a “howling wilderness.” It was only in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed interracial marriages. In May, 2014, I visited the Victoria Manalo Dravies Park in San Fran. She won two gold medals in London. She had to conceal her being half-Pinoy to be able to practice in pools for whites only. She came home and connected with her roots – to acclaim – in Orani, Bataan where her musikero father had hailed from.

Q10: What about other foreign troops?

A:  The Japanese would probably raise questions also if only because of the comfort women still seeking justice. The Koreans have a battalion in Cebu helping Yolanda victims. No static. The Japanese, 110V. The Kanos, 220V.

Q11:  Would the Malevolent/Magnificent Twelve vote NO! today?

A:  I rightly don’t know. 9/11, which killed 16 Filipinos, may have introduced a new dimension. But, there seems to be no threat now from Al Qaeda affecting us today with a sense of immediacy. The Americans have helped in Mindanao against Fundamentalist Talibanic elements. No static.

This Bedan is now affiliated with Ateneo for a Better Philippines,  at the instance of Au-au Pijuan.

R.A.V Saguisag
Saguisag & Associates
4045 Bigasan Street, Palanan
1235 Makati
551-6350/833-4140