US, PH mull potential restoration of bases

INVOKING the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty – acknowledging and repeatedly stressing its applicability in the West Philippine Sea (a Philippine proposition earlier rejected by the Obama administration) –the United States appears to be angling to use Subic Bay once more as its naval base in this part of the world.

After the Philippine Senate voted in 1991 to reject the continued presence of American bases, Subic is now a freeport, with a 300-hectare shipyard that was built in 2006 by the South Korean firm Hanjin. Considered in 2015 as one among the top 10 shipbuilders in the world, Hanjin was sold to U.S.-based Cerberus Capital Management in 2020 in the wake of the Korean company’s financial troubles. (It is now known as the Agila Subic Shipyard.)

Cerberus appears to have entered the picture to foil a move by Chinese investors to buy the facility, according to a report last year citing an unnamed “security official.”

It was “very opportune

Glimpses

THERE are so many times in our lives when it is easy to drop the high road for an easier, safer, and more profitable one. Yet, despite making choices much lower, even opposite the high road, we still look for it. There is an inherent attraction to the high road; it has logic, lots of logic, but beyond that, like a siren, it sings to the soul.

If the high road were not indelibly etched in our soul, if it is purely a matter of personal choice without an inborn, inner nudging, there would vastly be more of humanity unable to attain it. That there is a universal voice encouraging us to seek and move towards the high road is a deep message about its primacy in the totality of human creation.

I believe that religions resonate with humanity, that even before religions had their intellectual packaging, primitive man already looked to the sky that the (U.S.) came into the picture,” Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez candidly admitted in a forum early this month. “We would like to have more economic activity between the Philippines and China, being a neighbor, but we were also quite disturbed by the fact that they came in very strongly wanting to take over that project.”

The shipyard could soon see the presence of U.S. Navy ships because an American defense contractor, Vectrus Inc., has set up shop there. Earlier, in May last year, the Philippine Navy had leased the shipyard’s northern part to set up a naval operations base.

Security cooperation and “issues related to the South China Sea” were the core issues tackled at a four-day meeting held in Manila last week, billed as the 10th Bilateral Strategic Dialogue. In a joint statement, the Philippine and U.S. foreign affairs and defense panels highlighted Subic Bay as “priority site” for “high quality, private sector-led infrastructure investment as a means of supporting Philippine economic growth and enhancing connectivity in the Philippines.”

But the visits by U.S. Ambassador MaryKay Carlson and the heavens, feared yet revered the sun, resonated with the moon, was awed by the stars. It was not from teachings; rather, the sense of the supernatural was an impulse that man simply followed.

It appears, too, that while the history and development of man did have their very primitive stages, there was an unerring thrust toward the high road. In human time, it may seem like forever from one century to another, from one millennium to another. But in that context of seeming forever, the pattern of seeking the light, of moving to refinement, of expressing artistry – in other words, the high road – jumps out.

Every society, no matter how crude, crass, or violent, will profess they are acting so because they are pursuing elements of the high road. Many times, their leaders will be mouthing the high road but acting the opposite. Dictators and tyrants align themselves and their rhetoric to the high road in order to justify their cruelty to their enemies. Even in utter hypocrisy, the worst last November and, last week, by Lindsay Ford, the U.S. defense deputy assistant secretary for South and Southeast Asia, showed their specific interest in the shipyard. Notably, Ford was joined by Maj. Gen. Chris McPhillips, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s director of strategic planning and policy directorate. That move aroused more curiosity over the U.S. military’s plans on how to maximize use of the shipyard.

Besides the Subic project, the U.S. is hurrying up the completion of building facilities inside five selected Philippine military bases: three in Luzon, one in the Visayas and one in Mindanao. Purpose: to enable, as soon as possible, the U.S. armed forces to store war equipment and other materials in these facilities.

The five sites, however, seem not enough for the U.S., as it presses for hastening the verification of “additional agreed locations” for the same purpose.

On this point, DFA Undersecretary Teresita Lazaro clarified that “we agreed to finalize the procedures for the additional agreed locations. In fact, it is a work in progress.”

Lazaro co-headed the Philippine panel with Defense

Undersecretary Angelito de Leon. The U.S. panel was coheaded by Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Ford representing the defense department.

One can easily see that, in effect, the U.S. facilities would be mini-military bases within Philippine bases, wherein U.S. and not Philippine jurisdiction would prevail.

Note that under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), such facilities would be strictly controlled by American forces and off-limits to Filipinos. EDCA is the executive agreement that implements the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement or VFA, which allowed the rotational stay of U.S. troops – numbering 600 per batch – in the country throughout a year.

Last week’s 10th Bilateral Strategic Dialogue was intended to “facilitate focused and sustained inter-agency coordination, planning and implementation of action plans on priority areas.” The 9th BSD, held in Washington DC, came out with a “Joint Vision for a 21st Century United States-Philippines Partnership,” which Ambassador Romualdez said “outlined several areas of cooperation aimed at boosting security and economic ties” in the face of “current realities and challenges.”

Besides the above-cited moves, at the 10th BSD, the two panels agreed on the following:

• The U.S. will host a “maritime dialogue” this year to identify potential points of maritime activities;

• The Philippines will take steps to “streamline technology transfer” and develop a “road map for defenses mobilization;”

• Aside from the BSD, defense and foreign affairs ministers of both countries will hold their “two-plus-two ministerial dialogue” – the third since 2012 and 2016 – and stage a “policycentric tabletop exercise” by the third quarter of 2023. Supposedly intended to ensure “more coordinated responses to potential flashpoints,” no further details were provided.

• Set a year-end target for the conclusion of their General Security of Military Information Agreement to help simplify technological transfers of their respective defense units; and

• Reconvene the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement meetings that apparently have been temporarily sidelined.

Ambassador Romualdez has

Why take the high road?

will use the words of the high road.

There are many among us who feel deep frustration and even the beginnings of despair. They have been trying so hard to stay within the high road, struggling to resist compromise and corruption. Yet, they say that things are worse than ever, that many societal leaders have totally sold out their pride and principles for money and power. Sad, but with ample basis.

The very instincts of man may recognize the attraction of the high road but there are baser instincts that demand urgency over others. The need for survival will too often overwhelm the subtle voice of nobility, of heroism. When hunger dominates the lives of people, subtlety is temporarily muted, drowned in the noise of grumbling stomachs. No matter how divinely ordained the high road may be, it cannot just subvert the primal needs of man.

Those among us who may insist on the high road, risking everything including life itself, can do so because he or she has tasted the sweetness of purity, nobility, and altruism. We can give up the lower for the higher because we have known enough the flavor of the supernatural, enough for our courage to make a painful exchange. But those who have been left behind are not expected to know what a few have known, and will not sacrifice their survival for what they cannot understand.

The high road, then, demands of those who adhere to it a kind of advocacy beyond the conviction. Knowing the difficult path to the high road, the temptations that overcame us before we overcame them, those who have managed to attain to the next level or levels of life and understanding, can discern quite quickly that many remain in the grip of survival. Their decisions, then, will be to ensure survival. Survival is at the foundation of the totem pole – which means it must be served first before the journey upwards.

From dictatorial rule, which humanity has been used to from the start, to freedom and democracy, is a journey of lifetimes. If dictation had been the experience of mankind for millennia, it needs enough counterforce to reverse it and then move forward to the high road. But since the beginning of humanity to the present time is almost too much to measure not only in time and influence, shedding it from habit and culture for the refined will surely demand a great effort.

Thank goodness that several societies and countries have gone ahead of us in the political journey of man. They may have been most brutal and violent in their early stages but they did eventually learn from the pain of savagery. Their lessons drove them to try new ways. We have seen totalitarianism slowly gave way to shared power, even the beginnings of democracy. Their paths inspire us to follow, not necessarily them, but the universal journey to the high road. It does not mean that they have fully transcended their old patterns; but the high road has become competitive and will fight to go even higher.

I do not believe that patience also disclosed that in the past few months, “we have been discussing with the White House a possible visit by President Marcos to Washington.” The objective, he wrote, is “to further cement the ties between the longtime allies on various areas of mutual concern and interest. We hope to find a suitable schedule for both our leaders to meet this year.”

Last Thursday, January 26, in a television interview, Romualdez couldn’t help turning up the volume on the trumpets and drums that the current administration has been deploying to promote its initiatives.

Certain U.S. officials are impressed by Marcos Jr., according to him. “They find it refreshing, to say the least. They’ve obviously seen him when they came here… and they were very pleased to hear the things that the president has articulated, especially with regard to our relationship with the U.S..” (Philstar.com)

* * * The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.

* * * Email: satur.ocampo@gmail.com alone can contain the painful frustrations that afflict those who see and know the ethical decay eating away at the Filipino collective soul. There has to be courage to accompany convictions. Short of that, it is despair that will set in and anger that will erupt. Yet, either or both will simply be distractions in an already arduous journey we know as the high road.

It becomes even more grating when those who sell themselves to greed and lust for power at any cost seem to get away with anything, with everything. And, around us, are whispers from their secret agents trying to tell us, “If you cannot beat them, join them.” Devils come in many disguises. There is nothing easy about the high road or the effort to come closer to it. But look at it this way. If we do not want to fall back, what else is there for us? (Inquirer.net)

* * * the filing of criminal charges against various individuals before the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Manila on Thursday, Feb. 2. The BIR filed charges against 53 individual and corporate taxpayers for tax evasion totaling P3.57 billion, as part of the agency’s “Run After Tax Evaders” program.

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.

Amnesty International calls for ‘independent, impartial’ investigation of Lapid’s killing

MANILA — Amnesty International has called for an “independent and impartial” investigation into the killing of journalist Percival Mabasa, known as Percy Lapid, as his case remains in the “preliminary phase” four months after his death.

“Amnesty International urges the Philippine government to take all appropriate measures to ensure that the investigations into the killing of Lapid and Villamor are prompt, thorough, independent and impartial in order to determine the truth and create trust from the Philippine public and the international community in the probe,” the organization said in a statement dated February 1.

“All those responsible for or otherwise involved in these killings, including those who ordered them, should be brought to justice in fair trials if there is enough evidence against them.”

Lapid was shot in October last year while he was in his vehicle, near the gate of his private subdivision in the capital region. The rights organization is also calling on foreign governments and other global groups to keep monitoring his case.

The Department of Justice prosecution panel is set to resume its preliminary investigation on February after they denied the appeal of suspended corrections chief Gerald Bantag, primary respondent in the case, to have them recuse from handling the case.

Bantag and his co-respondents, including another official of the corrections bureau, are set to file their counter-affidavits next week.

Slow pace

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines noted that Lapid was the the second journalist killed under the administration of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. His show, “Lapid Fire,” was known for its critical analysis of government officials, including Bantag.

While an investigation into Lapid’s killing is underway, Amnesty International questioned how it is being conducted – particularly its slow pace and the death of middleman Crisanto Villamor Jr., who the organization said could have provided more details and information on the operation that led to Lapid’s killing.

“Given the Philippines’ poor record on the protection of suspects and witnesses, including following the death of Villamor, the government must also ensure that adequate measures are in place for the safety and security of all suspects and witnesses to the case,” Amnesty International said.

Bantag is facing a separate murder complaint over the killing of Villamor. (Kaycee Valmonte with Kristine Joy Patag/Philstar.com) n