United States supports West Philippine Sea?

The day June 15, 2011 we recalled the violent erruption of the Mt Pinatubo volcanoe in Pampanga, Philippines. It has been 20 years then since I saw in my whole life black and grayish smoke rose hundred kilometers up the sky that darkened the 3:oclock sun. In an hour ashful started coming down in Pampanga, Zambales, Bulacan including Metro Manila. To those who have shorter memories and those who just have nothing in those historic events to connect or associate in their own lives, this day was just as ordinary as partying in the beaches of Boracay, attending to customers in a fastfood restaurant or simply cleaning the pets at home.
I was among the early birds who joined the distribution of relief goods in the most afflicted communities in Pampanga as a member of the Lions Club then. The aftermath of the Mt. Pinatubo fury was so devastating, kilometers within its sorroundings were burried in deep lahar, churches, public markets could be seen only by their rooftops. Even newly completed houses built and owned by OFWs wre not spared by the cascading lahar and submerged in earth.
Two of the US military installations, the Subic Naval Station in Zambales, the largest military facilities in the Asia Pacific region and the Clark Airport Base in Pampanga were vrtually total wreck. That day it was as if all hell had broken loose. Subic and Clark were burried in 12 inches-thick rain-soak sand (ash) lahar. No building remained standing by the weight of the sand. Residents, dependents and military personnel helped each other packed everything they could carry and move to new and safer locations. Days passed and intensive clean up began. And in about two months basic necessities like electricity and water were back to normal. Many of those who temporarily moved out returned and help in the restoration efforts. But the fate of the US military bases then as far as the Philippine government was concerned was doomed. As early as 1969, during th Marcos years, rallies and demonstrations mostly violent were staged regularly particularly at the height of the leftist student activism, against the US military bases which Marcos had much depended on to keep his power.
President Ferdinand Marcos branded by the militant leftists as theUS puppet was eventually ousted in the 1986 people power revolution. Yet the bilateral contract between the Philippines and America signed way back 1947 in the use of the military bases for 99 years was about to end hence to be terminated. The US government had proposed a new contract, The Treaty of Friendship Peace and Cooperation for the extention of the use of the military facilities. But after the long and protracted debates between and among the pros and cons in the Senate and the media, add to these the continued street demonstrations in Metro Manila and other parts of the country against the bases. The Senate in 1991 by a majority vote rejected the proposed new treaty, despite the late President Cory Aquino's endorsement to favor the new treaty.

Today, with China's military posturing in West Philippine Sea, some senators who were then party to the rejection of the treaty are heard claiming but not so loud, for obvious reasons that the United States of America has the prime duty to help the Philippines by virtue of the Mutual Defense Treaty..CHUTZPA!
NIKNIK MO in the local dialect.Mel# bye