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Philippines and France to pursue key defence pact

Defence ministers for the Philippines and France vowed Saturday to pursue an agreement that would allow them to deploy troops to each other's territories, the latest such deal sought by the archipelagic nation located in the strategic South China Sea.

Philippines and France to pursue key defence pact
France's Minister for the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu (L) speaks during a joint press conference with Secretary of National Defense of Philippines Gilbert Teodoro. Photo: TED ALJIBE/AFP.

Speaking following a meeting in Manila, Philippine Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro and his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu said they agreed to seek authorisation from their respective presidents and relevant agencies to start negotiations for a visiting forces agreement.

The Philippines already has similar pacts with the United States and Australia, and has agreed to start talks for one with Japan. Manila has been seeking to boost defence ties in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond in the face of China’s increasing confidence in asserting its claims over the South China Sea.

The agreements create the legal framework for countries to send defence personnel to each other’s territory for training and other operations.

“We agreed to work on shared values, shared cooperation, not only in the South China Sea but also in the greater Pacific area where France also has a presence and which we want to further defence cooperation and presence with the other Oceanic nations,” Teodoro said.

Lecornu, the first French defence minister to make an official visit to the Philippines, said the French navy already had a “high number of operations and training in the region”. 

“We are working on an agenda of strengthening our presence in the Indo Pacific,” he said, using a term used by the United States and its allies for the Asia-Pacific region.

Neither Teodoro nor Lecornu provided a timeline for the start of talks on a visiting forces agreement. It was part of a “letter of intent” signed by the pair to “raise the level of interaction and to consolidate their exchanges through practical cooperation”, a joint statement said.

The Philippines has had multiple confrontations with China over disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims most of the sea, including waters and islands close to the shores of its neighbours, and has ignored an international tribunal decision that its assertion has no legal basis. It deploys vessels to patrol the waters, and has built artificial islands and military installations to reinforce its stance.

The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have also staked claims to various islands and reefs in the sea, which is believed to have rich petroleum reserves deep beneath its waters.

France has been seeking to reassert its importance in the Asia-Pacific region, where China and the United States are vying for influence. The European country has 1.6 million citizens in the Asia-Pacific across seven overseas territories, including New Caledonia and French Polynesia, and an exclusive economic zone spanning nine million square kilometres (3.5 million square miles).

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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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