More than half of Filipinos believe Philippines should strengthen security cooperation with Japan: survey
More than half of Filipinos believed that the Philippines should strengthen its security cooperation with Japan to defend the country's national sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea.
Based on the result of the survey presented by Pulse Asia President Ronald Holmes in a forum on Thursday, Japan got the second place next to the United States which got the highest rank of 82 percent.
"The United States should be the primary entity that we should strengthen our cooperation with. Second is Japan at 52 percent more than half of Filipinos agree or think that Japan, our relations with Japan should expand in terms of security cooperation," he said.
Australia ranks third with 25 percent, followed by the United Kingdom with 24 percent, then South Korea with 23 percent and China with 20 percent.
The survey also shows that half of the Filipino population believed that the Philippines should strengthen its military capability, especially the Navy and Coast Guard to effectively address the issues in the West Philippine Sea.
"Many Filipino believed that it is our capability that would determine the extent by which we can defend our territorial integrity and address issues in the West Philippine Sea," he said.
"Second to that would be to conduct joint maritime, patrols and military exercises with allied countries that is the opinion of about the third of the population, (then) to fully implement the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and Enhanced Defense Cooperation (EDCA) and the last one almost the same level of the third is to finalize what has been going for quite some time the code of conduct in terms of South China Sea," he said.
The same survey also shows that 53 percent of Filipinos believe that the protection of marine resources and environment in Philippine territory is the most important reason to strengthen our ability to defend and protect our seas, while 22 percent think the most important reason is the protection of rights of peoples and communities in the coastal areas.
Meanwhile, 14 percent of Filipinos believe in stopping China’s incursions in the Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
The survey that was commissioned by Stratbase was conducted from November 27 to December 1, 2022. Robina Asido/DMS
