Aquino urged to reveal docking deal with US

President accused of paving the way for the virtual return of US military bases in Central Luzon

Manila: Militants called on Congress to urge President Benigno Aquino to reveal the alleged signing of an agreement that gives docking and landing rights to American ships and aircraft at the former US bases in central Luzon, sources said.

President Aquino is “obliged by national interest to reveal the real score about his agreement with General Martin Dempsey, chair of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was at Malacanang Palace in early June, prior to Aquino’s official visit to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington D.C. on June 8,” Fernando Hicap, national chairperson of Pamalakaya, an organisation of fisherfolks, told the Star.

Aquino allegedly paved the way “for the virtual return of US military bases in Central Luzon”, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), said in a statement on June 6.

The agreement was to “to give the US military unrestricted prerogative to make use of the naval and airport facilities of its former military bases in Clark, Pampanga and Subic, Zambales [both in central Luzon],” the CCP claimed.

It quoted the alleged agreement as saying that US naval ships and military aircraft can use facilities only with “prior clearance from the Philippine government”.

It is an insignificant caveat to make the government appear to have the right to assert its sovereignty, the CPP said.

The agreement could mean “deployment of large numbers of American troops, naval warships, aircraft, drones and other military facilities on a level unprecedented since the 1946 Military Bases Agreement was rejected [by the Philippine Senate] on September 17, 1991,” the CCP warned.

It could also mean weakening of the “Philippines to exercise an independent foreign policy” and the “Philippines’ sovereign right to choose its friends and enemies”, the CPP added.

This will allow the US “to use the Philippines as a staging platform for its interventionism, power-projection and hegemony-building efforts in the Asia-Pacific region, in outright violation of Philippine sovereignty”, the CPP said.

If the agreement really exists, “the entire country is in danger of becoming an even larger American military base,” Eleanor de Guzman, deputy secretary of Bayan, a leftist political party, told Bulatlat, a militant news website.

In 1991, the Philippine Senate rejected the US-proposed 10-year extension of the now defunct 1946 Philippine-US Military Bases Agreement (MBA), the basis of US presence in the Philippines, which actually began right after the end of the Spanish rule in 1898.

But the Philippine Senate in 1998 ratified the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) that the executive level had signed with US representatives during the time of former President Fidel Ramos.

The VFA became a guideline in the holding of US-Philippine joint war games that resumed in the early 2000.

The war games paved the way for US intelligence assistance to Philippine soldiers who have been tracking down members of the Abu Sayyaf Group, a terror group with links to Jemaah Islamiyah.

It also allowed increased US presence in the Philippines.

These developments were seen as efforts to strengthen the country’s anti-terrorism campaign, and also to rebuff China.

Since last year, the Philippines has been complaining of China’s flexing of military might in the South China Sea; of harassing Filipino seamen, including Philippine vessels engaged in oil drilling activity in the contested sea-lane.

China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim the whole of the South China Sea based on historical rights.

Brunei, Malaysia, and Philippines claim some parts of the Spratly Archipelago in the South China Sea, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) which gives nations 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zone from their shores.

The Philippines and Thailand are two of US’s formal allies among 10-member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

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