Beyond general statements, a stronger asean solidarity is a must!

Makakalikasan-Nature Party PH calls on President Bongbong Marcos to provide more practical details on his general statement during the ASEAN summit today. While we appreciate the President’s call for ASEAN to take decisive and responsive steps on geopolitical issues, we urge him to provide more concrete and doable actions that ASEAN members can take to achieve this goal.

As a party that advocates for environmental protection and sustainability, we believe that the Party’s ASEAN Solidarity green agenda is a good starting point to articulate the President’s call. We encourage the President to consider the green agenda’s proposals on ASEAN cultural, economic, ecological, and security solidarity as a way to achieve a more sustainable and resilient ASEAN community.

Makakalikasan Party Vice Chairperson in charge of International Affairs, Ms. Ana Maria Felizardo declared that the Party offers to ASEAN a stand for each of our foreign affairs policies to be one of strong cultural, economic and SECURITY solidarity with the South East Asian nations and other close neighbors, protecting the integrity of our collective territories while pursuing peaceful negotiations & settlement to resolve conflicts on disputed territories among ourselves and to act as a block in the face of superpowers like the US, China and others that play a dangerous political tug-of-war in our region that exposes us to too many risks that we do not really want for ourselves.

This can be done for the issue of our shared seas by championing joint development and conservation for future use instead of heightened military posturing.

Needless to say, sufficient support should be provided to allow our individual defense forces sufficient complementary defensive capacities; in tandem as neighboring allies to protect the integrity of our collective territory and shared disputed territories against external threats and not be solely dependent on our mutual defense treaties with western superpowers. We believe that by working together to this extent, ASEAN can address the pressing issues of climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation that threaten the region’s future.

We call on the President to take the lead in promoting a green and sustainable ASEAN and perhaps reflect the spirit of these proposals in the “Code of Conduct in Disputed Waters” that he has again raised just now in the ASEAN summit.

Rommel Ortega

National Spokesperson

Makakalikasan – Nature Party PH