Needless attacks

The Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) has been trumpetting its alleged success as consummate builder of cities and exponent of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) modernization program.

Its officials have even boasted about BCDA’s rise as the biggest land bank in the Philippines that is capable of transforming vacant military lots into modern cities, as supposedly exemplified by how it has turned the erstwhile Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City into the Bonifacio Global City (BGC).

But has BCDA really been true to its task?

Republic Act No. 7227, which created BCDA in 1992, provided for  autonomy for the sprawling former Clark and Subic bases, while authorizing it “to own, hold and/or administer” former American military reservations and “portions of Metro Manila military camps which may be transferred to it by the President.”

In filing Resolution 439, adopted by the Senate in May 2011, Senator Vicente Sotto III said that “despite its billions of pesos in earnings ... BCDA has not significantly contributed to the modernization of the AFP,” which is BCDA’s  primary beneficiary under RA 7227.

Because “the AFP continues to complain of lack of funds for its modernization program and the welfare of its uniformed personnel,” Sotto continued, “it is important to assess the performance of BCDA in addressing these concerns ... and determine whether it has been effectively fulfilling its mandate.”

Now let us take a look at some of the “cities” which BCDA has claimed to have developed.

BCDA president Arnel Casanova and BCDA subsidiary John Hay Management Corp. (JHMC) are still at it, as BCDA attempts to kick out its private partner CJHDevco from Camp John Hay.

It will be recalled that BCDA terminated its contract with CJHDevco in May 2012 just before the Baguio Regional Trial Court (RTC) granted the developer’s petition for arbitration.

Not to be outdone, BCDA planned a takeover that was only aborted by a court injunction issued in February 2012.

Even before those moves were thwarted in court, BCDA has severed communication with CJHDevco for all but a year since 2003 – when this firm first suspended payments to pursue a remedy for alleged BCDA breaches of contract, mainly the denial of permits – to date.

A compromise agreement was reached in October 2008 that guaranteed all permit issuance within 30 days in exchange for the developer’s consenting to BCDA’s account of its arrears and a waiver of BCDA liability for breach of contract.

But the conflict resumed in October 2009 when CJHDevco, claiming that BCDA was reneging on the 2008 pact, was again forced to suspend payments as a way to compel arbitration, which is actually a contractual remedy – in cases of dispute.

Good for BCDA, it has have found an ‘administration ally’ in the city’s neophyte solon – Rep. Nicasio Aliping Jr.-whose resolution convened the House Special Committee on Base Conversion last February for a hearing, which CJHDevco had politely declined to attend owing to a pending arbitration verdict by Philippine Dispute Resolution Court Inc. (PDRCI).

Aliping should  go over the transcript of the public hearing that this same House bases conversion committee, then chaired by Rep. Manuel Agyao, conducted in March 2012 in an effort to settle this BCDA-CJHDevco row primarily for the benefit of Baguio City.

The committee members had reached a consensus on the status quo pending the settlement of the issues that both parties had leveled against each other during that hearing-a consensus that BCDA had obviously defied in resuming its public attack against CJHDevco soon thereafter.

How can CJHDevco be remiss in its rentals and other MOA commitments to the government when it has already remitted P1.5 billion in rentals to the BCDA, created 2,000 jobs and invested P5 billion in the development of the erstwhile military camp?

CJHDevco has already lost P11.6 billion in potential revenues over the 2007-2011 period alone from this CJH project because of the BCDA.

CJHDevco should have earned P12.1 billion from development projects it could have started early on, had it not been delayed by changing administrations modifying the rules at every turn, as well as the global recession of 2007 and 2008. 

BCDA has demanded payment of P3 billion in back rental fees from CJHDevco, despite BCDA’s breach of an agreement in the 3rd RMOA that CJHDevco would honor all its financial obligations on condition that the government put up a One Stop Action Center (OSAC) to expedite within 30 days the processing of all business permits needed by the private developer and its sub-locators.

There has never been a fully operational OSAC as envisioned in the 3rd RMOA. In fact the OSAC has only exacerbated the situation, because in failing to do its job of speeding up the processing of business permits, it has only added one more bureaucratic layer between the applicant and the permit giver.

In a position paper that CJHDevco had submitted to the House bases conversion committee in 2012,  this private developer recalled that at the start of the project in October 1996, the BCDA already committed the following violations: failure to deliver “clean possession” of 32 hectares of the leased property most suitable for development but which remained occupied by community residents and other entities; failure to immediately demolish structures that would have enabled the CJHDevco to take effective control and possession of critical parts of the leased property; delay in the issuance of the IRR covering the leased party and failure to enter into a MOA with the Bureau of Customs on the implementation of duty incentives at Camp John Hay; and, failure, through BCDA’s then-subsidiary John Hay Poro Point Development Corp. (JHPDC), to assist CJHDevco in obtaining an Environmental Compliance Certificate or ECC from the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). The ECC was issued two years later on Jan. 26, 1998.

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