When logic is involved, then we could say that a misconstruction of it could be said as plain stupidity. There is no school to correct stupidity just as one who is unschooled cannot be called stupid if he is able to put his logic in order. In its lowest category, it simply means common sense. But when we take ignorance as an issue, certainly it would require an extra effort to learn much that there are complicated problems beyond using one’s coconut to understand it.
Acknowledging this dilemma, our lawmakers devised a method on how to construct and interpret the laws they want obeyed. Among lawyers, they call this as “statutory construction”, which in substance is more of logic, and than in knowing what the law ought to be. Since they know that somehow many of us would one way or the other not be able to understand the laws, they came out with a maxim which says, “Ignorance of the law excuses no one from compliance therewith” or in Latin ignorantia legis nenimen excusat.
I am appalled because one could sense the stupidity of those who drafted the 1987 Constitution that if concurred by the Supreme Court could make the members of that august chamber doubly stupid. In fact, the political sycophants of Mrs. Aquino continue to regale their stupidity. To make my point, Section 4 of Article XVIII of the Constitution states to quote, “All existing treaties or international agreements which have not been ratified shall not be renewed or extended without the concurrence of at least two-thirds of all the members of the Senate.”
In this particular instance, the military bases agreement by whatever the parties would like to denote, like calling it Visiting Forces Agreement or Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, is a treaty that needs to be ratified by the Senate. It is the rule in our system of government that have been adopted and incorporated in the 1935, 1973 and in the present 1987 Constitutions. That rule is premised that all treaties or international agreements, including the present EDCA, simply need to be ratified by the Senate.
The problem is not really about the ratification process but that the Constitution went stray to state in Section 25, Article XVIII, to quote: “After the expiration in 1991 of the Agreement between the Republic of the Philippines and the Untied States of America concerning Military Bases, troops or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred by the Senate, and when Congress so requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast by the people in a national referendum held for that purpose, and recognized as a treaty by the other contracting State.” (underscoring supplied)
The phrase “and recognized as a treaty by the other contracting State” is an added requirement that it must be ratified by the US Senate to be called a treaty. As we desperately try to rectify our illogical thinking, the other party is rubbing insult by treating the agreement they forced upon us as an executive agreement to get away with the required ratification by the US Congress. That means the US is not officially committed to come to our defense as what it agreed to defend its Nato allies. Since the agreement is only signed by the US President, it follows that US commitment to this country is merely a matter of policy that may be observed by a particular US President, and not a treaty obligation. On that level, US can choose whom to consider as our enemy.
Invariably, if the Philippines is attacked and it is not in the interest of the US to defend us, it may choose not come to our defense, they not being automatically obligated us by a treaty. Paradoxically, if the US is attacked, we are automatically obligated to come to their defense even if in truth it was the US that is the aggressor state, and even if the country to which the US is at war is not our enemy because, in the words of Claro M. Recto of our canine devotion, “we ratified our agreement with them as a treaty”.
The illogical constitutional commissioners that framed the illogical provision are now caught in their own game of stupidity. Our Senate cannot ratify what is essentially banned or not allowed. To uphold one portion of that provision could effectively impair the other, or to put it bluntly, make the more important aspect, which is prohibitory, redundant, or worst, an oxymoron. If the supposed treaty, not otherwise ratified by the US Congress, wherein the stationing of foreign troops or the building of facilities in a military base is banned or is not allowed by the Constitution, no amount of ratification will make that agreement legal and constitutional. To say otherwise is to make ourselves hilariously stupid because it means that we have completely mixed up our logic. We need not even know the constitution to understand what it wants to convey.
When the US refused to ratify the agreement and in lieu, considered it as a mere executive agreement, in truth, it rejected the agreement. There is no treaty ipso facto so to speak, for the Supreme Court to uphold as valid and constitutional. Second, since the treaty was not ratified by the other party, as far as we are concerned, that treaty should have automatically been considered abrogated without any act on our part to declare or make it official. That again is logic.
Our negotiators should have been more circumspect to understand the sequence and consequence of a treaty-making process. The Philippines should have immediately treated the decision of the US as an act rejecting Edca, or to treat the agreement as one that was not perfected.
Rather, we proceeded in ratifying it despite the fact that the other party refused to ratify it, and now this government is pestering the Supreme Court to declare it valid and constitutional.
In fact, the Supreme Court need not even examine every sinew of the provisions of the Constitution to find a loophole they could use to validate and justify Edca, but merely ask themselves whether the agreement that is being presented is indeed a treaty or in the first place, whether there exists a treaty for the court to decide.
If only we stood firm to the constitutional mandate of banning all military bases in the country, we would not now undergo the humiliation of having to make a fool of ourselves to make valid and constitutional what is patently disallowed. After all, it takes two to tango to conclude a treaty. Besides, if only the clumsy constitutional commissioners simply stated that all treaties need to be ratified by the respective parties’ Congress or parliament, or that they did not insert what we call in the vernacular as “kolatilya,” we would not be cracking our skull to make logical what is obviously is illogical.
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