Removing Sangley naval base will leave Manila defenseless

Removing the naval base in Sangley, Cavite, for an international airport will leave Manila defenseless. Bay reclamation for runways will spur disastrous floods. Historic landmarks will be demolished. Thus the Philippine Navy opposes dislocation of its principal base by a purely commercial venture.

Sangley Point is the Philippine Fleet’s main berth. Not only the gunships will be evicted by airport construction. To be dismantled too are the PN’s main repair and maintenance facility, fuel depot, ordnance depot and fleet support services. Sangley is only ten kilometers from Manila across the bay. Specialized PN units quartered there – air squadron, sealift, commandos, engineering, communications, among others – will be dispersed far from the seat of government.

Location and mission make Sangley strategic. The sea lies on both sides of the narrow land strip at the outer edge of Manila Bay. That marks it as staging point for forces protecting the bay area. It is the PN’s alternate command center in case its bayside headquarters on Roxas Boulevard, Manila, is paralyzed, say, by earthquake. As part of the national capital’s security, Sangley houses special warfare units and facilities.

An international airport would drive away the PN and nullify Sangley’s strategic value. Already the Air Force base beside the PN’s has given way to the transfer of small private aircraft hangars from Manila International Airport.

The PN was never consulted for a dislocating Sangley Point International Airport, a PN study states. The Cavite provincial capitol ideated it from a 2013 executive order and 2016 congressional bills to relocate military bases. As well, from another EO in 2019 that moved to Malacañang from NEDA the approval of reclamations.

Last Feb. 14, 2020, Cavite officials awarded the construction of the initial phase to a China state firm. Completion target: two years.

China Communications Construction Company is to get P208.5 billion out of the total P550-billion airport plan. Phase 1 consists of one of four intended runways, upgrade of an old terminal and a 4.6-kilometer connector from the Manila-Cavite Expressway. Reclamations would be massive, the PN study states.

The PN stand precedes the present controversy about CCCC. That firm reclaimed into island-fortresses seven Philippine reefs that China grabbed. PN objection to the airport plan began when it learned about it years back from news reports. It was formalized upon accession of PN chief Vice Adm. Giovanni Carlo Bacordo 11 days before the contract grant to CCCC.

The PN foresaw squabble even back then. “The SPIA Project is not without criticisms,” the study says. “Its proximity to Metro Manila, and the role of CCCC in building militarized islands in contested West Philippine Sea, lures controversy. As reported in a news outlet, SPIA is also among the projects identified in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, China’s most ambitious plan to project global influence. With weakened military presence in the area once SPIA is completed, these issues raise national security concerns amidst territorial disputes in the WPS.”

Last week the US blacklisted CCCC and 24 subsidiaries for leading 27 destructive reef dredging projects in the South China Sea. The artificial islands enabled China’s militarization of the waters through which $5 trillion in global commerce pass each year. Encroached are reefs and exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. As China BRI’s main implementer, CCCC projects elsewhere in the world are mired in corruption, the US said. Aside from prohibitions to deal with US companies, the sanctions include denial of US visas to persons linked to CCCC and their families.

Foreign Secretary Teddy Locsin said he will work for legal abrogation of CCCC contracts with the Philippine government. Among those are reclamations and port constructions in Davao City, dredging in the Visayas and bridge and road works in Metro Manila.

Sen. Risa Hontiveros supported Locsin’s plan. Sen. Panfilo Lacson said contract reviews should lead to prosecution of crooked officials. In 2013 the World Bank banned CCCC and all its subsidiaries from bridge and road works that it funds in the Philippines – for contract sleaze and shoddy work.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Rody Duterte preferred to keep the China contracts.

The CCCC airport project in Sangley would displace as well the Navy’s largest in-base housing for personnel. Dwellings, parks, churches and schools of their families would be demolished. Sailors, civilian employees and PN suppliers who live in surrounding communities also will have to relocate.

The PN would lose its main shipyard, logistics hub, aircraft repair and maintenance hangars, and port for Armed Forces troops to and from other camps nationwide. Along with those will go the training site for ship and aircraft crew.

The commercial airport will extend to Cañacao inlet, the Navy’s only sea passage into its Sangley base. In Cañacao was routed Admiral Montojo’s Spanish armada by American Commodore Dewey in 1898. Historical markers on the end of the Spanish-American War and the US takeover and departure will be torn down. As well, a museum on PN accomplishments and capabilities.

The PN proposes a balancing of the SPIA’s commercial viability with naval security objectives. After all, the Manila and nearby Clark International Airports are being expanded, the PN says. And “President Duterte himself has strongly expressed pessimism in having parts of Manila Bay reclaimed owing to environmental concerns.”

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