Senate caucus, EDCA, legal issues (“Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement”) Re a “contract-review” of the EDCA, or a line-by-line legal, textual review, may I upload that in the blog a few minutes before the oral arguments in the SC, if any; or after all the pleadings have been filed and the case submitted for resolution. A contract-review sets forth legal entanglements, line-by-line, provides options, etc.– all the parties are actually benefitted by the information. Let me just do that later, it will benefit both parties, pwomisse. I’ll just confine myself to “live legal tweets” on the EDCA. Well, it is more than live, it is anticipatory, the Senate caucus is not yet happening (or is it): News peg: From Grace Poe, interview: “ ‘My question is: Let’s say there’s an invasion, we are attacked, how fast will the Americans come to our assistance? Will they still go through a UN (United Nations) resolution?” she (the senator) said on Nimfa Ravelo’s program on dzBB.’ “ Legal tweet: Ito po ang MDT: Article 5, MDT: “(A)n armed attack on either of the parties is deemed to include an armed attack on the metropolitan territory of either of the parties, or on the island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific or on its armed forces public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific.” Ang pinuproblema po ay iyong mga disputed territories – hindi po iyon saklaw ng MDT. Ok. That’s all. Don’t want to do free staff work.
After the Aquino administration and the U.S. State Department used the Marcosian tactic of keeping official enactments a secret by making the provisions of the “Ph-US Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement” top secret for two days even after the agreement has been signed, publicly, with no explanation why the provisions were not accessible to the public (the dictator Marcos had secret presidential decrees that contained short-cuts of criminal procedure and penal provisions that military and government prosecutors pulled out in the middle of habeas corpus proceedings to keep political prisoners in jail; not even the U.P. Law Center had copies of such secret decrees), finally, the Official Gazette (c/o Manolo Quezon III) uploaded a PDF file of the agreement last night. Here it is, in this link:
