MAURO GIA SAMONTE
I already had doubts that day in November last year when former ambassador Alberto Encomienda called a meeting among like-minded friends to tackle the issue of Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana agitating for review of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) between the United States and the Philippines. The former envoy had prepared a lengthy paper enumerating the different facets of the issue, the most overriding being that the treaty had long lost its reason for being as far as the Philippines was concerned, so it was high time the accord got scrapped for good. I believe it was in that meeting that I proposed the formation of a group specifically meant to campaign for the abrogation of the treaty. I named the group SCRAMDT for Scrap the MDT.