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REPORTER: Controversy still dogs the Philippines election but there's no doubting who will be the next President.
SARAH FERGUSON: In your speech to the Australian Parliament, you use unusually strong language, quoting your own pledge, you said, "I will not allow any attempt by any foreign power to take even one inch of our sovereign territory. We will not yield."FERDINAND MARCOS JR: Absolutely.
FERDINAND MARCOS JR: At several levels, at several levels. In fact, in January of last year, when I went to Beijing, and I visited with President Xi Jinping, that is what I proposed. A kind of hotline between us, so that if there is a message that needed to be sent from one president to another, we can be assured that that message will reach them.
FERDINAND MARCOS JR: I think it's important to make it very, very clear, whatever the Philippines does, the Philippines does because it is in our interests, not because it has been dictated upon us by anyone. SARAH FERGUSON: How important is it, from your point of view, that Australia has chosen to acquire and build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines?FERDINAND MARCOS JR: I support AUKUS, I support the Quad and I think that this just represents a stronger front in terms of maintaining the peace, maintaining the peace in the South China Sea.
SARAH FERGUSON: That's why you need the phone, the same phone that Khrushchev and Kennedy had, right?SARAH FERGUSON: Let me try and understand what you might want, what you might want from Australia. Would you expect the Australian Navy to come to the defence of Philippines forces in the event of conflicts with China over disputed territory in the South China Sea?
And that, if we can stop it at an early stage, nip it at the bud as it were, then there's no need for it to grow into other areas, other regions. And the position that we've taken is that we do not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC. We view it as a threat to sovereignty, simply because the ICC was formed to conduct, to provide justice to areas where there is no, there is no judiciary. Where there is no court system, where there is no police, where there is no peace and order and that's not the Philippines.
FERDINAND MARCOS JR: I have no impulses to authoritarianism whatsoever. We have a good system going. I think we've learnt to, we have a constitution that we have, that we have gone by for the last 36 years now. SARAH FERGUSON: Let me just understand, make sure that we are talking about the same thing. I think Amnesty records during that period 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 tortured, 3,200 people killed are the numbers and your father in an interview admitted that over 50,000 were detained.FERDINAND MARCOS JR: Oh, yes. There always is. It was war and with war the death and destruction is inevitable but this is a war not declared by the government of the Philippines.
And I think we have been, we have since the cases were filed, the government fell. Cases were filed against me, my family, the estate etc and up to now we have, the assertions that were made, we have been shown to be untrue.
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