PB member wants body to review VFA

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu Provincial Board Member Victor Maambong filed a resolution asking President Gloria Arroyo to create a body to make recommendations on the issue whether to review, suspend or abrogate the Visiting Forces Agreement.

The resolution of Maambong and PB member Peter John Calderon, which is set to be discussed on tomorrow’s PB session, calls for review of the VFA over the US Embassy’s refusal to hand over US Marines Lance Corporal Daniel Smith who was convicted for raping a Filipina.

The circumstances and the decisions made in the case involving Smith, particularly the Romulo-Kenney agreements of December 2006, placed Smith under the custody of the US Embassy.

But in his resolution Maambong cited the US Supreme Court decision in the case of Medellin vs. Texas case of March 2008, where the US Supreme Court upheld that “a treaty, even if ratified by the United States Senate, is not enforceable as domestic federal law in the United States, unless the US enacts the implementing legislation, or the treaty by its terms is self-executory and ratified by the US Senate as such.”

“Because the US Congress has not herefore enacted a law purposively implementing the VFA, which, additionally, is by its terms not self-executory nor has the US Senate ratified the same, we are confronted by a legally absurd situation where the VFA is enforceable as a domestic law in the Philippines and has no similar effect as such in the United States,” the resolution read.

Maambong added that “it would be a standing reproach and ignominy to our sovereignty where our law can be preposterously rendered incapacitated and inutile within the jurisdiction of another state.” — Garry B. Lao/BRP (THE FREEMAN)