Marcos on EDCA: we are not getting a good enough deal
“We are not getting a good enough deal for giving them access,” Senator Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. said during a senate hearing on Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
“If they will put up runways, they will be the ones using it, they put it up for themselves. We might even have to pay for what they put up when they return it to us,” Marcos said. According to him EDCA lacks detail and precise conditions.
“It would seem to me that nothing in the agreement precludes any area,” the senator said, he also added that US may possibly ask Philippines for new bases.
However, on the other hand, President Benigno S. Aquino III said, “So will it stand scrutiny? Yes. Will there be people who will try to derail it? Yes, also. But we are reasonably confident that anybody looking at it objectively will be able to say that we have met all the stipulations in the Constitution.”
I have been a supporter of Marcos for many years but he is clearly just trying to make a statement to get nationalists to like him for the 2016 elections.