Bitter Battle over Bases

Filipinos increasingly resent U.S. military presence

The fiery chairwoman of the 7 million-member Kabataang Barangay (Youth Council) held her audience spellbound as she denounced the U.S. "Step up the drumbeat!" she exhorted her youthful followers at the council's convention in Laguna province this month. Calling for total war against foreign intervention, she demanded the dismantling of the huge U.S. military bases in the Philippines.

A Maoist from Manila? A leftist from rebel-torn Luzon? No, the angry orator was Maria Imelda (Imee) Marcos, 22, elder daughter of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Imee's outbursts coincided conveniently with her father's efforts to renegotiate the terms of American compensation to the Philippines for the use of the 191,705 acres occupied by Clark Air Base and the large Navy installation at Subic Bay.

Was Imee's Yankee-go-home rhetoric Marcos' way of trying to exact an exorbitant rent for the bases? A 1947 U.S.Philippine agreement stipulated that the bases were to be rent free. Marcos may be calculating that the U.S. can now be intimidated into meeting his demands for more than $1 billion in rent over a five-year period. The President has insisted that Philippine foreign policy is not anti-American, but there is no doubt that he has been angered by official U.S. complaints about human rights violations under his dictatorial rule.

Although no country has more ties to the U.S., anti-American feeling now runs higher in the Philippines than at any time since they gained independence in 1946. Increasing nationalism has made many Filipinos resentful of the conspicuous signs of American influence. The U.S. embassy in Manila is one of the largest in the world, with a staff of 813. Even some of Marcos' opponents felt that the U.S. stance on human rights was a crude intervention in Manila's domestic affairs. Local businessmen complain that their coconut oil is heavily taxed when it enters American ports, while a similar product from Malaysia is imported under low preferential tariffs. Meanwhile, the archipelago is awash with American pop culture. Rock 'n' roll is so ubiquitous that the radio stations have been ordered to play at least one Filipino-language song every hour.

The greatest irritants to Philippine sensibilities involve the U.S. bases. Clark Air Base and the Subic Bay naval facility are bastions of affluence that contrast painfully with the poverty and squalor near by. Filipinos are critical of the PX mentality that prevails on these military reservations. At Clark an Olympic-size pool, 18-hole golf course, three movie theaters and 14 base exchange stores serve the 20,000 people who live there. Until U.S. and Philippine authorities cracked down this year, too much of the tax-free stereo equipment, perfume, potato chips and liquor sold at the exchange stores ended up on the local black market.

Subic Bay, a major liberty port for the U.S. Seventh Fleet, has a permanent base force of 8,000--swollen by as many as 9,000 sailors passing through on shore leave. Much of their contribution to the local economy is made in the honky-tonk town of Olongapo, where the principal commodity for sale is sex. About 15,000 Olongapo residents are registered "bar girls," many of them infected with a penicillin-resistant strain of gonorrhea known as "Viet Nam Rose." According to Navy estimates, American sailors spent $128 million in Olongapo last year--not all of it, of course, on recreational sex.

Defense analysts differ on how important these installations are to U.S. security interests. The majority view, as one State Department specialist puts it, is that "there is value to the bases for both parties." For that reason, the Administration is urging Congress to approve $120 million in economic and military aid for the Philippines in fiscal 1979. That is expected to make the U.S. bases somewhat less offensive to Marcos, and even to Imee.

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