Non-transferable PAF

THE PHILIPPINE Air Force out of Clark within three years’ time or before the end of the term of President Aquino.

So bared Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) President Arnel Casanova before the Capampangan in Media Inc. last Friday at the Bale Balita in Clark.

The PAF to relocate to Cubi Point in Subic. So as to open to more investments – and therefore more profitability – the 360 hectares of land the military units have been occupying at Clark, Casanova said. He did not say however how much the relocation will cost the government.

And he did not have to say that the PAF at Cubi Point will be more in-place as it is nearer the flashpoint that is the Panatag Shoal.

So should Clark start saying its goodbye to PAF?

Not quite.

This is one long goodbye. Casanova’s disclosure but the latest edition in the long-running PAF-leaving-Clark drama.

An issue of the Philippine Star in September 2008, carried the story PAF poised to leave Clark to give way to more investors bylined Ding Cervantes that read: Amid the shortage of land for investors at this Freeport, the Philippine Air Force announced it is preparing to abandon some 300 hectares it is occupying here and move to its old base in Floridablanca town while it builds a new one in Crow Valley in Tarlac.

… Col. Francisco Cruz, commander of the 600th Air Base Wing here, said though that about P8 billion is needed “to pull out and transfer personnel, equipment and infrastructure from Clark.”

“We are just waiting for the master development plan to be finished before we could proceed with the pull-out of personnel,” Cruz said.

Apparently, no master development ever came thereafter. The PAF, and the national government mayhaps overwhelmed by the logistical nightmare the transfer would entail.

The prolific Ding Cervantes again, writing Air Force relocation from Clark sought in the Philippine Star in October 2011:

 Calls for the relocation of the Philippine Air Force contingent stationed here have been renewed amid the proposed transfer of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to Clark.

“The continuing occupation of part of Clark by the PAF virtually makes a garrison state of the whole Freeport, which is detrimental to the climate of investment in the area,” said the broad-based advocacy group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement.

In its advocacy for the “full operationalization” of the Clark airport as premier international gateway since the early 1990s, the PGKM has made the removal of the PAF from Clark as a “pre-condition.”

“Only in the Philippines, only in Clark at that, can one find military contingents and war materiel dumped in a Freeport and an international airport. What message does impart on foreign investors, on tourists? That Clark is a war zone,” the PGKM said. “And what businessman in his right mind would come to a war zone?”  

“The removal of the PAF from Clark is the first order of the day for the transfer of NAIA,” the group furthered.

…The “oust-PAF-from-Clark” sentiments have time and again cropped up through the years with other groups such as Move Clark Now and even the Metro Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Industry as well as local elected officials joining the PGKM in issuing calls for PAF to be relocated out of Clark.

Move the PAF out of Clark. Indeed, long overdue.

But move the PAF to Cubi in three years’ time?  

Casanova may yet prove himself a miracle worker. Or failing, a leg-puller.