Senate OK of PH-Japan military pact seen this month

Department of National Defense Secretary Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr. —Photo from the official Facebook page of the Philippine Department of National Defense

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s military access deal with Japan will be submitted to the Senate this month for ratification, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said on Monday.

The Philippines and Japan signed a landmark reciprocal access agreement (RAA) in July, a deal that provides the legal framework for both countries to send troops to each other’s territory for joint training.

“We expect the last concurrence within a week or next week,” Teodoro told reporters on the sidelines of a forum commemorating Maritime Archipelagic Nation Awareness Month. “We have to get the concurrence of several agencies and right now, all the concurrence has been gathered. The Office of the President will submit it to the Senate,” he said.

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During the signing of the agreement in July, Teodoro said the RAA “will put flesh into our already strong, robust bilateral relations” and also lead to “greater interoperability, exchanges of information and other cooperative activities both bilaterally and multilaterally under the aegis of a rules-based international order.”

The RAA will take effect once ratified by the Philippine Senate and Japanese Parliament.

Negotiations for the RAA between Manila and Tokyo took only a record seven months, while the Philippines formalized a similar visiting forces of agreement with the United States after two years and another with Australia around a year after it was proposed.

Last week, Senate President Sen. Francis Escudero said they have yet to receive a copy of the deal, pointing out that it should be submitted by October so it can be ratified this year, otherwise it will have to wait for next year.

“Hopefully, we will be able to do it within the year if they give it to us before the end of October. If they give it to us any time after that, we will be busy with deliberating on the 2025 national budget and it might already be next year by the time we come around to ratify again. It will depend on when they will submit it to us for ratification,” he said.