Treaty easier junked than a marriage contract

Annulling a marriage is often lengthy and messy, while it only takes one bad hair day for the President to trash a long-standing treaty. Annulment only involves both spouses. Writing off a treaty, on the other hand, impacts the entire nation and, potentially, generations of its citizens. When the framers of the 1987 Constitution were stacking the final texts on Article VII, Sec. 21, they probably did not have in mind a future where someone occupying the highest post in the land would brook no qualms trashing international agreements, ex parte. The constitutional provision reads: “No treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective unless concurred in by at least two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.” The apparent lapse in putting safeguards on what happens next was what the recent hubbub was all about. The Senate’s hands are tied, perhaps mindful of the statutory proscription “expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” i.e., what the law does not include, it excludes.

And a lacuna has also found its way into Article IX (Duration and Termination) of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), viz: “This [VFA] agreement shall enter into force on the date on which the parties have notified each other in writing through the diplomatic channel that they have completed their constitutional requirements for entry into force. This agreement shall remain in force until the expiration of 180 days from the date on which either party gives the other party notice in writing that it desires to terminate the agreement.”

Inattention to filling the sentence with qualifiers (colatilla), even at the risk of sounding like a broken record, enabled one person to scrap a document that presumably went through a long vetting process during the deliberative phase. With the noise that followed, the Senate had to run to the Supreme Court for relief. Meanwhile, the omission is now costing so much confusion, not to mention frayed nerves between long-standing allies.

If there’s any lesson this issue has brought to fore, it is that writers and authors of treaties and other international agreements (or even common documents) should have known better.

TED P. PEÑAFLOR II, [email protected]