CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – A militant group has warned the Aquino administration that it would be “treacherous” to forge an “enhanced defense cooperation pact” that will allow the US military more access to Philippine military bases.
This, even as the Pambansang Lakas ng KIlusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) noted that already, a “mini naval base” for the Americans has been under construction even before the pact could be signed.
Pamalakaya said the pending defense agreement, reportedly up for signing during the slated visit of Pres. Obama to the Philippines later this month, was “a wholesale sell-out of national sovereignty.”
Salvador France, vice chairperson of Pamalakaya, said the new military agreement with US “should be challenged in the parliament of the streets, in the court of public opinion and other venues including but not limited to the halls of Philippine Congress and Supreme Court.”
Earlier, Defense Undersecretary Pio Lorenzo Batino said a new access pact granting US military wider access to Philippine military bases and facilities would be likely signed during the state visit of Obama on April 28 to 29.
Pamalakaya noted that the construction of a P 500-million mini-naval base allegedly to accommodate the US military in Oyster Bay in Palawan has been ongoing even before the new agreement with the US could be signed.
The group noted that in October 2013, Commodore Joseph Rostum Peña, commander of the Philippines’ western navy, announced that the plan would be a mini-Subic Naval Base that could accommodate the navy’s two frigates, both former US Coast Guard cutters, positioned near the disputed Spratly Islands located some 160 kilometers from the disputed West Philippine Sea.
Pamalakaya said the plan to convert Oyster Bay into a mini-Subic Naval Base was “revived under the administration of Pres. Aquino in response to Washington’s gesture to donation of frigates in 2011 and 2012.”
“This Oyster mini-naval base is being readied for imperialist war, colonialization and and neo – colonialization ahead of the signing of US-PH access pact,” said Pamalakaya. The group said that “the Philippine Senate –the ratifying authority of any PH-US military agreement in the country is completely ignored” in the pending US-PHL military agreement.
Pamalakaya also said “the Senate and the House of Representatives with their respective committees should investigate the Oyster Bay project and summon officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Department of National Defense (DND), compel them to report on the current status of the US naval base plan and
the outcome of the talks between Malacanang and the US government.”
Last year, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Carlos Sorreta said the Aquino government saw no problem with the construction of US military facilities as long as it would be approved by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and that ownership would be turned over to the government after every joint military exercises.
Pamalakaya asserted that planned relocation of Philippine air force and navy units to the former American naval base in Subic, Zambales is also “part of the grand design that would justify Washington’s unlimited access to Philippine bases which was previously announced by local military officials as part of new basing agreement between PH and the US.”
The group said the “US military command wants Subic because its’ location will cut reaction time by fighter aircraft to contested West Philippine Sea by more than three minutes compared with flying from Clark airfield where some air force planes are based.”
