Abrogating VFA is a national flagellation!

What’s happening in the Philippine Senate these days where both Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson and Sen. Jinggoy Estrada (responding for his father Erap) are using their parliamentary immunity to destroy each other’s reputations and have all but shamed this once prestigious and noble august body. The only thing positive we can look forward to in the Senate is that, elections are just a few months away and we can only hope that next year, our people would be electing a better crop of senators to restore our confidence in the Senate.

Both Ping and Jinggoy ought to stop their circus and move their debate to our courts of law! We’re talking about coercion, intimidation and complicity to murder, which should never be discussed in the Senate, but only in our courtrooms! Surely someone is telling the truth, while the other is merely telling us a pack of lies. As to who is lying, let the judge decide.

Meanwhile, this sorry crop of senators led by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago approved on second reading a resolution urging the President to abrogate the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). Do our senators know what they are doing? The fact remains that the United States is our best and strongest ally and we know too well that the dream of most Filipinos is to get a “green card” to the US because life in this country is bad, thanks to ugly politics!

Perhaps we should remind our senators a little bit of history of the Philippine Air Force (PAF) where after we got our independence from the US, we were given front-line P-51 Mustang fighters. In these times, it would be like using General Dynamics F-16s or even the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Strike Eagles. But thanks to the Philippine Senate, we lost the US bases and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) was the biggest loser! That would be fine if we didn’t have domestic or internal conflicts like the still-raging communist insurgency and the Muslim separatist problems we’ve been having in Mindanao for decades and of course, the Abu Sayyaf!

Today, even after selling those military camps like Fort Bonifacio, the AFP is in a sorry state especially in terms of equipment. This brings us to the question, where did the money from that sale go? Today the Fort is a nice place to visit, but whenever I drop by there, it always reminds me that this deal was a huge mistake! If those lots were not sold, but leased on a long-term basis, the money earned would have gone far into improving the AFP.

Thanks to the VFA, at least the Philippine military can still count on some American support in terms of training and equipment that we could hardly afford and other kinds of military materiel. Our problem really is that, we are so damn proud of ourselves to the point of being smug that the Senate would dare demand to abrogate the VFA as if it was a hole in our heads!

Our senators ought to wake up to the reality that we still live in a dangerous world with a rogue nation like North Korea just a few hours’ travel from our country. Taiwan and China still haven’t reconciled as of yet. Clearly the majority of Filipinos still regard Americans as a good friend (regardless of what our senators say), and America needs us just as much as we need America! Now unless the Philippines has become so economically and military strong that we can stand alone, I don’t thing abrogating the VFA is a step in the right direction.

Nations that do not even have any internal strife like tiny Singapore even maintain strong military and strong ties with the US and spend large chunks of their budgets for the military. How much more for us where our military is fighting many fronts, from communist insurgents to Muslim separatists and terrorists? If you ask me, abrogating the VFA is an act of national self-flagellation! I say that abrogating the VFA is a stupid move!

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That was a great front page photo in The Philippine STAR last Thursday that showed the recently uncovered M4 Sherman tank obviously belonging to the US forces that recaptured the City of Manila toward the end of the war. I hope for history’s sake, they won’t sell that part of World War II history. While most of the hulk is intact, I’m sure that you can get information like chassis numbers so that its origin or manufacturer can be traced and eventually tracked down to which unit of the American forces it belonged.

When I was a kid, there was a rusting old Sherman tank close to our house in the Parian district of Cebu where we used to play war games. Then someone turned our tank into a toilet and that was the end of our war games. Worse, people who had no sense of history took the tank away and most probably sold it for scrap! I found out later that the tank where we used to play was part of the Americal Division that fought a two-day battle on Gochan Hill (not the Eco-Tech Center in Lahug) and was struck by a mine.

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