Point of VIEW. A
purely analytical perception...
Continued from page 3
So
the United States pulled out of this Alice and Wonderland type of place where
nothing is quite what it appears to be.
The Philippino's fit of macho insanity against the United States was an
attempt to prove their manhood, and what did they get for their efforts?
Well let’s take a look.
They
took over the biggest American Naval and Air Force Bases in the world, and they
acquired everything that went with them.
The base was a glimmering combination of neatly arranged depots, barracks,
offices and machinery. This was set
against a magnificent sunrise and sunset, with the mountains and the ocean providing
the kind of beauty normally reserved for a Hollywood movie set.
The Subic Bay Naval complex itself was more than 40,000 acres -- or put
in simpler prospective, 63 square miles in size, a mammoth facility.
When
Subic Bay was taken out of American management, Richard Gordon was appointed by
the Philippine Government to oversee the change from military to civilian rule
and the displacement of soldiers and sailors with multinational corporations.
Gordon was a talented guy, dictatorial, but he ran a clean ship and knew
what he was doing. Gordon made one
mistake, though, he didn’t vote or campaign for Erap and was therefore ousted
from his position years before his contract was due to expire.
Philippine police armed with automatic rifles surrounded Mr. Gordon’s offices
while he was barricaded inside. The
police took on more than 100 of Gordon’s supporters, who knew the job he had done
in Subic Bay and feared for the country if he was removed.
Twenty of his supporters were injured during the three-months that it took
the army to eject Gordon, and then, Gordon stepped down without incident while
honoring a court order.
Was
next occurred is part of the Philippine way of life, essentially a failure to
deal with today’s realities. Erap
brought in his own guy; Felicito Payumo was Erap’s appointee and became Subic
Bay’s new chairman. We can best describe
what then occurred by quoting from an article from the Far Eastern Economic Review:
“It wasn’t supposed to be this
way. When the Philippine Senate voted to cancel the Military Base Agreement on
September 16, 1991, it was supposed to be the day Filipinos took their country
back. It’s difficult to describe
the scale of the American presence at the time.
Not only were the bases huge, but also the amount of money they injected
into the economy was staggering – the U.S. paid $481 million in 1991 alone for
the use of the bases. On top of that,
the U.S. gave the Philippines $160 million a year in “multilateral assistance”
and heavily supported Philippine loan applications with international lenders
as part of what the Cato Institute, a U.S.–based think-tank, has described as
“an implicit quid pro quo of U.S. access” to the bases. By comparison, total foreign direct investment in the Philippines
in 1991 totaled $544 million. “Nationalists
wanted to use the bases to reinvent the country, liberating it from its postcolonial
dependency. Ambitious plans – particularly
at Subic – were laid to convert the facilities into world-class transshipment
zones, tourist attractions and industrial parks.“
“Instead,
foreigners came to Angeles (the nearest city) to invest mainly in cheap sex. The
Maoist protesters may represent a lunatic fringe, but their rage reflects a wider
sense of bitterness at the nation’s failure to decolonize itself.
Nowhere is that disappointment more palpable than in Subic Bay. “
Not only are companies leaving the facility,
but many of those that are there are no longer even paying rent. Even current Subic chief honcho Payumo admits that he has been
stuck with over $30 million in back rent.
“The infrastructure needs a little work,” he says, just as the electricity
shuts down in his office. According
to Jaime L. Mendoza, president of the Concerned Citizens Alliance for Good Government,
Good Speed Garment Corporation is the 65th company to leave the Subic
Bay Freeport since last year, adding another 300 employees to the growing ranks
of the unemployed. This makes a total of 8,000 people in Olongapo City who are
affected by the decline in investments in the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.
The Department of Labor and Employment statistics show that Olongapo City
has an unemployment rate of 22.32%, supposedly the highest in Central Luzon.
Alex Magno, President of the Foundation for
Economic Freedom, told it the way it had become: “Subic is quickly turning into
a disaster, labor is more expensive than in China or Vietnam, so we can’t compete
in labor-intensive industries. There
is virtually no domestic or foreign tourism.
Because the investors need new skills, they hire migrants, not locals –
to be blunt, you can’t convert a prostitute into a chipmaker.
Subic’s only real impact on the local population is as a source of cheap
duty-free chicken.”
Ogier
Galvezo, a former consultant to the Asian Development Bank, discussed the American
pullout: “It was a nightmare when the Americans left; we were not prepared.
We…just thought they could never leave.
There were 20,000 to 25,000 employees.
If you worked for the navy before 1955, you were a federal employee; you
could apply for U.S. citizenship. Those
who started after 1955, after 15 years they could apply as a “special immigrant.”
In addition to regular employees, there were 50,000 to 75,000 contractors
and their employees. Then there were
those that told about the free medicine and house calls the U.S. provided the
Base’s workers and the dependents, along with what apparently was unlimited free
fruit that was given away by the Navy to natives before it spoiled.
America considers their closing of
Subic Bay the largest withdrawal in their Navy’s history.
Subic’s deep-water port, jungle-clad mountains and a giant airfield at
Cubi Point, itself carved out a mountain, offered unparalleled training, resupply
and recreation facilities for the 7th Fleet.
More than 70% of Navy and Marine supplies for the Persian Gulf War, for
example, came through Subic…The military also leaves 1,876 air-conditioned homes,
hundreds of office buildings and warehouses, a jumbo jet airport, a hug ship-repair
complex, a 26-megawatt power plant, an eight-hole gold course and other recreation
facilities-and what is probably the country’s largest tract of pristine rain forest.
“Without the Americans, we will be hungry,” says Annalyn Jagden, a 28-year-ld
bar girl sitting alone in the nearly deserted Johnnie O’s, one of the few remaining
bars. “What will we do?”
In addition to the above, the base
had two large grocery stores and merchandise shopping centers, bowling alleys,
a swimming pool, movie theaters, scuba diving, windsurfing, sailing and power
boating along with miraculous fishing and hunting. The base had a 2.4 million barrel fuel storage area (probably
the biggest in the Pacific), easily one of the biggest warehousing complexes in
the world, the ability to produce 12 million gallons of water a day, a ninety-two
bed hospital expandable to 443 bids, a 25-megawatt generating plant and storage
space for 50 tons of weapons and ammunition. Subic Bay got its run at a miracle,
but they have stubbed their toes really bad. A photographer from Australia, Kevin Hamdorf (who used to take
pictures for Subic businessmen and has been literally out of work for months)
was discussing the miracle: ”Acer,
the Taiwan computer giant, is cutting jobs and moving business to China, while
Thomson SA of France just closed its phone factory. A circuit-board maker, convenience store and a pencil plant
have also moved out…Brownouts, smuggling and crime have returned, residents say.
Hamdorf’s house, just outside the Freeport Zone, was robbed twice, despite
the presence of Niko, his Dalmatian watchdog.
After the dog was grabbed last month, it took $100 in ransom to get him
back.”
“At
happy hour at the Subic Bay Yacht Club, soft piano music drifts across the lounge.
Giant picture windows offer a view of the harbor that America’s Seventh
Fleet once called home and where, today, a cluster of leisure boats bobs in the
rain. The $80 million club was part
of a grand plan to turn Subic into a tourist haven. Yet now, the bar is empty, there isn’t a member in sight, and
the guest-services manager is asleep.”
The United States thought that the
Philippinos were crazy to want them to leave.
However, locals were especially impressed when -- in spite of the hard
line attitude of Philippine officials -- the American’s left without a whimper
and gave the Philippines the gift of an infrastructure that literally could not
have been replaced at any cost. This
wasn’t quite all that the Americans left the their friends in the Philippines,
for they left them with tons of hazardous waste. Slightly more than 100 people who are asking for in excess
of $103 billion for their troubles have filed a small lawsuit against the United
States and The Philippine Government. The
charges are that many people who lived near the former bases have died from nitrates,
mercury, lead, chromium and cadmium in contaminated areas.
“The Philippine Health Secretary Alberto Romualdez has confirmed toxic
contamination in at least 16 places in Clark and 10 in Subic, but so far a direct
link to cases of cancer and other diseases among people living near the areas
has not been established.”
In an interesting sidebar to the
escalating problem of PCBs and other contaminants left laying all over the place:
“If there’s a horror story out there, Subic may be it,” Defense Department official
David Berteau told the Los Angeles Times in June 1990.
The Times also quoted a U.S. Air Force official in Washington as saying,
“We comply with host-country laws. In
the Philippines there are none, so we are not in violation of any.”
Sounds reasonable to us, well, maybe. Previous
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