Ex-US bases back to military use?

COMMONSENSE

By Marichu A. Villanueva (The Philippine Star) 

Sessions of the 16th Congress resume today after more than a month-long legislative recess for the Lenten break.

Senators and Congress leaders will have a mouthful to talk about burning national and local issues. Actually, our lawmakers have only one and a half months left before the second regular sessions adjourn sine die on June 14.

On the eve of the resumption of session, senators and congressmen are getting edgy over the latest developments on the plunder cases involving the alleged P10-billion misuse of the Priority Development Assistance Fund. Other than the three incumbent senators and five former congressmen earlier implicated and charged with plunder, a number of other senators and congressmen are reportedly included in the next batch to be implicated in the PDAF scam cases.

This is especially after businesswoman Janet Napoles – the alleged principal accused in the pork-barrel scandal – executed an affidavit to secure concessions on plunder cases filed against her. In sworn affidavit before Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, Napoles purportedly narrated in detail her transactions with certain senators and congressmen and their chiefs of staff.

While these senators and Congress leaders are still in the hot seat, they have to attend to pending bills that are in various stages in the legislation mill. Although their hands are full on these pending bills, many senators have spoken out their intention to also look into the newly signed Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

The ten-page document on EDCA was signed by Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin for the Philippines while United States ambassador Philip Goldberg signed it for his government. It was signed last Monday a few hours before US President Barack Obama arrived in Manila for an overnight state visit here.
As the treaty-ratifying body, the Senate under the country’s 1987 Constitution must muster a two-thirds vote of the senators, or 16 out of the 24, for treaty to pass. At the outset, however, the administration of President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III has taken the position that EDCA is just an executive agreement that needs no Senate ratification. 

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who chairs the Senate committee on foreign relations, expressed her extreme displeasure after the EDCA was signed allegedly without prior consultations with the Senate. On the other hand, Sen.Antonio Trillanes IV who chairs the Senate committee on defense, claimed the senators were sufficiently consulted even while the EDCA was still under negotiations. Now, who is fooling who?

Under EDCA, the US forces will be given access to military bases in the Philippines. This raised the possibility that the American military forces could return to use their former base facilities at Subic Bay in Olongapo City in Zambales as well as Clark Field in Angeles City, Pampanga. Both Subic and Clark have the capacity to accommodate heavy and large American military ships and planes.

The American forces vacated Subic and Clark in 1992 after the Philippine Senate refused to extend the Military Bases Agreement. Despite appeals from former President Corazon Aquino, the late mother of P-Noy, thirteen of the 24 senators – including presidential brother-in-law Butz Aquino – voted to abrogate the bases treaty.

The Philippines, however, is still bound by an existing Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) with the US, and the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) of 1999. Under these two pacts with the US, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) continuously engage in regular war games and military exercises with American troops.

Since the American military bases were removed from Clark and Subic, the Philippine government has succeeded through these years to slowly transform them into bustling “free ports” and industrial hubs for foreign and local investors.

In the specific case of Subic, it has attracted a large number of South Korean companies and business establishments into locating in its Freeport. If you go around Subic Freeport, you see at every nook and cranny establishments from grocery stores to schools and church bearing South Korean “Hangul” script. Even the street signs inside Subic Freeport have “Hangun” script obviously to guide South Korean communities that have grown in Subic.

So much so that Subic has since then been slowly transformed into “little Korea.” This is because of the presence of big South Korean companies like shipping giant Hanjin among the major locators at the Freeport run by the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA).

Registered at SBMA as Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Philippines, Inc., the South Korean firm figured in another fatal industrial accident inside their shipyard in Subic last May 1. It was most unfortunate the latest Hanjin shipyard accident happened while we observed Labor Day.

A belated report from the SBMA confirmed a Filipino welder died from severe burns in an accident at work at the shipyard. Local organized labor group Partido ng Manggagawa noted this is the 37th reported work-related death at the Hanjin shipyard since they set up at Subic. Of the estimated 21,000 workers in the shipyard, the PM claimed, only a few hundred are actually employed by Hanjin but the bulk are hired by 19 subcontractors.

During one of the presidential visits to Subic, PM chairman Renato Magtubo recalled President Aquino thanked Hanjin for its P24-billion investment in the country. More than the investments, Magtubo challenged President Aquino to take up the cause of Filipino workers in Hanjin who are exposed to seeming lack of compliance to industrial safety standards by the South Korean company.

It brings to mind the sea accident in South Korea involving Sewol ferry, carrying mostly high school students on a field trip to Jeju island, that sank off Jindo last April 16. As of latest count, 228 were confirmed dead with 74 are still unaccounted for. The South Korean government arrested not only the ship’s captain and its crew who were rescued alive but also its company owners and officials were rounded up to answer for the tragic sea accident.

Before dealing further with EDCA on military use again of Subic naval and air facilities, Philippine authorities must take a second look first at how the free port’s civilian shipyard facility has become a graveyard for Pinoy workers.