ANGELES CITY- Political and multi-sectoral leaders in this city which used to host the largest US military base outside continental USA are unanimous in their support for Pres. Aquino’s decision to allow the US military more access to military bases, including former US bases at Clark and Subic.
Ruperto Cruz, whose multi-sectoral group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM) had spearheaded the move to convert Clark into a premiere international airport after the Americans left in 1991, said “it would be okay to accommodate the US military if only to protect ourselves from China bullying, but this arrangement should only be temporary.”
“Eventually, Clark should be made thoroughly civilian to pave the way for a full-fledged international airport. Even the Philippine Air Force should eventually move out of Clark,” he said in an interview here.
Noting that some 300 hectares of Clark continue to be used as military base of the Philippine Air Force, Cruz said that any US military access at the former base here should not, however, be allowed to disrupt the commercial operations of the Clark International Airport.
“Any use by foreign military should be limited to the Crow Valley area which is regularly used anyway for joint exercises under the Visiting Forces Agreement,” he said.
Cruz also said Subic, which used to host a US naval base, should also be accessible temporarily to the US military, noting its location near the West Philippine Sea where China has been asserting itself over a territorial dispute with the Philippines
The other day, the President said the country’s military facilities are open not only to the United States but to other allies as well.
Aquino said the country needs every help from allies, particularly the US and Japan, in enhancing its defense capabilities and in dealing specifically with China’s growing military presence in the West Philippine Sea and that such an access arrangement is “but the natural circumstance of credible alliance” while stressing that such access would be only temporary.
This city’s re-elected Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan, a former human rights lawyer who has also been among those batting for the full conversion of Clark into a premiere international airport, also expressed support to allowing foreign allies more military access to Philippine bases, “provided it is within the provisions of the Visiting Forces Agreement signed by both our countries.”
“Even without the present problem between China and the Philippines as in the past, the US and the Philippines have already been conducting military exercises in the base (Clark). What is prohibited is the basing of foreign troops in the Philippines,” he said.
For his part, Mayor Marino Morales of neighboring Mabalacat City said the President’s decision to open more access to foreign allies on temporary basis “must have been taken in the greater interest of the country.”
“It is only a temporary arrangement that the President must have been pushed to take, amid the bullying we have been experiencing from a powerful country we seem to be helpless against,” he said.
But Morales also said that eventually, “any military trace at Clark should be removed to pave the way for its being fully transformed into a civilian international airport.”
