The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) emphasized the importance of keeping the country stable amid the ongoing political noises and continued revelation of the massive corruption in government.

In a broadcast interview aired at the Bilyonaryo News Channel on Tuesday night, AFP Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner Jr. admitted that the recent revelation of Senator Panfilo Lacson about an offer for him to be part of a "civil military junta" is "a cause of concern".

"Of course, yes it is a cause of concern because right now for us in the military what is really important at this point in time is that we have to keep our country stable," he said.

"There are calls for us for the AFP to withdraw our support for the president or to launch a coup d'etat or even a military junta but several times we have announced that we have rejected these as well because we believed that we still need to keep our actions within constitutional means," he added.

Brawner explained that factors which were considered by the military in rejecting the calls for intervention include the economic state of the country, foreign policy and regional security.

"There are several factors we are looking into that is why we decided to reject these calls number one, the economy of our country if we allow extra constitutional means let say changing the government it will affect the economy, the economy will collapse, right now even if we don't have this extra constitutional mean we can see that it is already collapsing," he said.

"On the foreign policy side, we might have sanctions from other countries so when we decide we are not just looking at the political environment in our country we are also looking at the bigger picture, for instance the regional security because if we are going obey what they (those who call for military intervention) want to happen only China will benefit from it," he added.

In a radio interview last Sunday, Lacson revealed that he was offered by retired military officers to be part of a civil-military junta which he ignored.

"There were those inciting and wanting a civil military-junta. Some retired military officers have reached out to me, I won’t mention names, I was ignoring them. Some even offered that I be part of the ‘junta’, of the ‘council’. But I did not entertain them,” he said. Robina Asido/DMS