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.
Official Gazette director did his job by publishing the EDCA; OG copy not signed, here
The official copy of the Ph-US EDCA in the Official Gazette is not signed
mlq3 , our dear Manolo (Usec Manolo Quezon III) did his job: his functions as Official Gazette (OG) director is to publish all official enactments; and he did just that, competently. we should thank him. i’m guessing that after not being given a signed copy, he used his acumen and was able to get a copy of the agreement – here it is, it’s not signed (normally, the official copies of official enactments published officially are signed, and every page, initialled). I rendered the OG pdf file into jpeg format to be uploadable, here it is, so you can see, ten pages, “Ph-US Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement” (still in quotation marks as far as this blog post is concerned, since those terms are really euphemisms and do not embrace the content — recall the use of the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques”, investigated by US Congress committees on the treatment of detainees in the Guantanamo prisons; “enhanced interrogation techniques” being officially known as torture in the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)
What is the status of an unsigned copy being published by the Official Gazette? This is the official copy, the Official Gazette being, by law, the recognized repository of official enactments — any alterations, omitted provisions, hidden provisions, in other copies are intercalations. (intercalations! punishable under the Revised Penal Code! — nakakainis na ang mga nagtago/ nagtatago ng kopya nito. Normally, you could issue the Defense Department thru the Defense Secretary, and the Foreign Affairs Department, the Executive Secretary, and the Palace a demand letter asking that a copy be furnished you within 24 hours otherwise you will avail of remedies under the law, etc. … )
Anyway. here they are. thank you, Manolo, for performing your duty: Here are the unsigned pages constituting the official copy:
