In a speech on Saturday night during his meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, the Phillippines’ President, Rodrigo Duterte, threatened to once again end the country’s Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) military pact with the United States (US) if Washington fails to deliver at least 20 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“They know the Visiting Forces Agreement will already expire. If the termination of the deal takes effect, they must leave the country. If they cannot deliver even with just a minimum of 20 million vaccines, ah they better get out. No vaccine, no stay here,” Duterte said. He further added, “If America wants to help—deliver. Stop talking. What we need is the vaccine, not your verbose speeches.”
According to media reports, the Philippines missed its chance to receive 10 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer due to the alleged failure of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III to submit the confidentiality disclosure agreement for the successful acquirement of the vaccines. Lawmakers have claimed that the country would have possibly secured the vaccines from the US drug manufacturer as early as January 2021 had Duque worked on the confidentiality disclosure agreement. According to Duterte, the fate of the VFA is now up to Pfizer and the Philippines’ official in charge of acquiring vaccines, retired general Carlito Galvez Jr.
Duterte’s comments are starkly divergent from his government’s previous support of Washington. On June 2, secretary of foreign affairs, Teddy Locsin Jr. argued that, “in a time of pandemic and heightened superpower tensions,” it would be in the Phillippines’ best interest to keep the VFA in place. Following this, on November 10, Manila temporarily suspended its earlier decision to terminate the twenty-year-old VFA with the US for a second time, “by yet another six months, to enable us to find a more enhanced, mutually beneficial, and more effective and lasting arrangement on how to move forward in our mutual defence”.
The decision was welcomed by the White House as the countries worked on forming a long-term mutual defence arrangement. This 1998 agreement provides a framework that extends legal status to thousands of US troops in the Philippines for military exercises and humanitarian assistance.
Ever since Duterte took office in 2016, his foreign policy has been known to take an anti-Washington stance. This is despite the fact that the Philippines is the largest recipient of US military assistance in the Indo-Pacific region, having received 33 billion pesos worth of planes, ships, armoured vehicles, and small arms like smart bombs since 2015. Even recently, the US gifted military equipment worth $29 million to the Philippines in an effort to boost the country’s external defence capabilities. Additionally, Washington has also made several high-level diplomatic visits to the nation over the last three months to strengthen bilateral cooperation with Manila. The US’ efforts towards the Philippines, which has a pro-Beijing government in power right now, are in pursuit of strengthening its ties in the Indo-Pacific to counter an increasingly aggressive China.
Duterte Threatens to Repeal VFA if US Doesn’t Deliver COVID Vaccines to Philippines
The Philippines’ president, Rodrigo Duterte, said that he will suspend the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States if Washington does not provide 20 million coronavirus vaccine doses.
December 28, 2020
SOURCE: AFP