FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. announced on Wednesday, November 11, 2020, that President Rodrigo Duterte has extended the suspension of the abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the Philippines and the United States.
“My President, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, has instructed me to convey with the appropriate formality his decision to extend the suspension of the abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement by yet another six months, to enable us to find a more enhanced, mutually beneficial, mutually agreeable, and more effective and lasting arrangement on how to move forward in our mutual defense,” Locsin said in a letter addressed to US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.
On February 11, 2020, on orders of Duterte, Locsin sent a letter of intent to the US on the termination of the VFA, a pact since 1999 which permits the conduct of joint US and Philippine troops’ military training.
The President gave the order after the US cancelled the US visa of Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, the former chief PNP and the principal implementer of the government’s highly criticized drug war.
However, in June, Locsin said Duterte has suspended the termination of the VFA for six months "in light of political and other developments in the region," particularly in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), a development welcomed by the US government.
“The past four years have changed the South China Sea from one of uncertainty about great powers’ intentions to one of predictability and resulting stability with regard to what can and cannot be done, what will and will not be acceptable with regard to the conduct of any protagonist in the South China Sea. Clarity and strength have never posed a risk. It is confusion and indecision that aggravate risk,” the recent letter stated.
“A great deal of credit for the renewal of stability and security goes to deft diplomacy, unequivocal expressions of policy, sturdy postures of strength combined with unfailing tact, and pragmatic national security advice exhibited by both our governments in the same period,” it added. (SunStar Philippines)