The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Monday marked its 87th founding anniversary in a ceremony held at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. attended the celebration for the primary time because the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He was joined by AFP Chief-of-Staff Bartolome Bacarro, Department of Defense officer-in-charge Jose Faustino Jr., Ilocos Norte 1st District Representative Sandro Marcos, and different authorities officers and international dignitaries.
Marcos additionally led the conferment of awards on navy officers, civilians, and organizations who had nice contributions to the AFP.
During his speech, Bacarro vowed to maintain the federal government’s positive aspects within the nation’s inside and exterior safety together with reducing the communists’ terrorist teams’ functionality and the modernization of the AFP belongings.
“International security operations are of prime importance to ensure the safety and security of our citizens against spoilers of peace and lawless elements,” mentioned Bacarro.
“On this front, we can confidently state that we have achieved strategic victory and it is inching closer towards victory against terrorism. Our localized peace-building efforts with a multi-stakeholder and whole-of-nation approach also yielded positive results that encouraged enemies of the state to return to the fold of the law and build goodwill with communities,” he mentioned.
Bacarro additionally mentioned the AFP has strengthened its exterior ties with the Philippines’ accomplice nations within the ASEAN, the Indo-Pacific Region, and different nations.
“We also conducted training, military exchanges, and joint combined exercises. These opportunities allowed us to learn from our international counterparts, have our voice heard on the global stage, and conduct defense diplomacy purposely and rationally,” he mentioned.
Further, the navy official thanked the President and Vice President Sara Duterte for his or her belief and assist, saying they’ll depend “on the same zeal and commitment from the AFP in ensuring the safety, the integrity and the security” within the nation.
“Soon, we will unveil a new campaign plan, a plan that will assist in setting the stage for the attainment of genuine unity, synergy, and peace for our country. As we look forward to the dawn of the new year, rest assured that we will remain hard at work operationally and strategically in sustaining our gains made these years,” he mentioned.
“We all witnessed the AFP accomplish an inordinate amount of good work, thus this has been an uncommonly good year for the AFP,” he added. — BM, GMA Integrated News
