BOGOR CITY, Indonesia—President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. will be leaving Indonesia with several agreements on various areas of cooperation having been sealed just on his first state visit as the Philippine head of state.
Upon invitation of President Joko Widodo, Marcos Jr. met him at his official residence, the Bogor Palace, to witness the signing of several agreements and talk about the military cooperation between the two countries.
Among these included the crafting of Plan of Action for bilateral relations of the Philippines and Indonesia over the next five years; the renewal of the 1997 Agreement on Cooperative Activities in the Field of Defense and Security (DSCA); and the Memoranda of Understanding on Cultural Cooperation as well as on Promotion on Creative Economy.
Also included in their talks is the Philippines' plan to procure air and sea assets from Indonesia, particularly aircraft and landing platform dock vessels.
Delivering a joint statement, Widodo said both countries also agreed to review border security agreements as well as to accelerate negotiations on the delimitation of continental shelf based on UNCLOS 1982.
"In the field of defense and security, we encouraged strengthening cooperation and safety and security of waters in border areas," Widodo said.
The Indonesian president also expressed appreciation to the Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement or TCA among Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, "which is very important to secure our waters from threats of hostage-taking and kidnapping."
For his part, Marcos said he and Widodo, who will lead Indonesia's chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) next year, also talked "at length" about the two countries' role as they "face the difficulties in this very volatile time in geopolitics not only in our region but also in the rest of the world."
"We agreed that ASEAN is going to be the lead agent in the changes that we would like to see in continuing to bring peace to our countries. And again the assistance that we have received from Indonesia been a very important part of that," Marcos Jr. said as he delivered his part of the joint statement.
The President said his discussion with Widodo "progressed so rapidly" that they both agreed to organize task forces already to meet and discuss things even at a technical level.
He said these matters are "no longer at the political or the diplomatic level, but at a technical level, so as to be able to take a full advantage of the opportunities that we feel that are available to us, and that we will need to exploit to succeed in the near future."
In his closing speech, the President said he made the "proper choice in coming" here for his first state visit.
"I believe that this is only the beginning of many more things to come between Indonesia and the Philippines," he said.