Chief presidential legal council and former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said that the country must do away with its constitutional ban on nuclear weapons, calling it “the most serious and unwanted provision in the Constitution.”
Enrile made his thoughts known after Senator Robin Padilla invited him to the hearing of the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes on proposals to change the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution.
Article II Section 8 of the Constitution states that “the Philippines, consistent with the national interest, adopts and pursues a policy of freedom from nuclear weapons in its territory.”
Enrile argued that the removal of the provision was necessary for the country to defend itself “as a small country against superpowers.”
“In the modern world today a small country can protect itself against the superpowers if they have nuclear weapons… If we can afford it we should also have nuclear weapons so our people will not be trampled upon let alone made a tuta (puppy) or alipin (slave) of other countries. We must be sure that we make our people equal, if not better than others,” Enrile said.
Enrile blamed “the Cory government,” the administration led by former President Cory Aquino following the 1986 People Power Revolution that ousted Ferdinand Marcos Sr from Malacañang Palace, which he had defected to during the period.
“We must now remove the restriction imposed by the Cory administration on this country and her people not to have any nuclear in the country. I think in my personal opinion that is the most serious and unwanted provision in the Constitution,” he said.
However, the Philippine had already adopted a stance against nuclear weapons even before the 1987 Constitution. Enrile was justice secretary in 1968, during the first term of Ferdinand Marcos Sr’s administration, when the the Philippines signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which sought to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology.
In 2017, the Philippines also signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, banning the development, testing, production, acquisition, possession and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. The Senate concurred on the treaty’s ratification in 2021.
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