CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (Bukidnon News/ 31 December 2024)—A naval base will be constructed within the 3,000-hectare state-owned PHIVIDEC Industrial Authority in Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental. This is in addition to the new Air Base facilities to be built at the old Lumbia Airport, 27 kilometers away.
‘NO CAUSE FOR ALARM’
In an interview with Lt. Col. Francisco Garello, 4th Infantry Division spokesperson, he said the naval base should not be a cause of alarm as it does not fall under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) the Philippines signed with the United States in 2014.
Lt. Col. Garello said the Tagoloan base will be used to dock ships intended for “humanitarian missions” in Northern Mindanao. He added that as the base is not under EDCA, the construction cost will be shouldered by the Philippine government.
Despite protests on EDCA’s validity, the Supreme Court declared the agreement as constitutional. In 2016, former senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago said both EDCA and Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) signed in 1999 should be scrapped as neither were treaties, which was required by the Constitution to allow in “foreign military bases, troops, or facilities” nor were they approved as such by the Senate or recognized as treaties by the United States.
The Supreme Court then ruled that the EDCA sites, chosen among existing Philippine military bases, are not equal to the US bases that the Senate already closed in 1992, and that the facilities added still belong to the country.
Under EDCA, five bases will grant access to American military: Antonio Bautista Air Base (Palawan), Basa Air Base (Pampanga), Benito Ebuen Air Base (Cebu), Fort Magsaysay (Nueva Ecija), Lumbia Air Base (Cagayan de Oro).
National Defense secretary Gibo Teodoro held a presser at the Lumbia site in November. With him (in white) is Atty. Lordan Gualberto Suan, representative of Cagayan de Oro’s 1st district. (Photo by Sean Sulugan) 
This dome was eyed as the command center for Disasaster Risk Reduction and Management. 
One of the facilities to be constructed on the Lumbia site is a warehouse.
LUMBIA AIR BASE
The Lumbia Airport, which had operated as a major domestic airport from 1930s until 2013 when it was replaced by the one in Laguindingan, was since occupied by the Philippine Air Force. Its transition as an EDCA site was delayed due to the previous administration’s stance in the agreement and shift in foreign policy.
On February 2020, then-president Rodrigo Duterte terminated the Visiting Forces Agreement, but recanted in July and fully reinstated it the following year. Despite his administration’s pivot towards China, the Chinese Communist Party maintained and even intensified its incursions and attacks against local fishermen in the West Philippine Sea, which fell short of triggering the Mutual Defense Treaty the Philippines signed with the US in 1951. It was already ruled by an international tribunal in 2009 that China has no legal basis for its claims in the area.
In 2023, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr agreed to four new EDCA sites, which were as follows: Naval Base Camilo Osias in Santa Ana, Cagayan; Camp Melchor Dela Cruz in Gamu, Isabela; Balabac Island in Palawan; and Lal-lo Airport in Cagayan.
In a press conference last November 30, National Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said the facility hosting American military will not cover the entire Lumbia Air Base as other parts will also be used to house the 15th Strike Wing of the Philippine Air Force, command center for humanitarian missions, and the Office of the Civil Defense (OCD) in the region. Teodoro added he is just waiting for Malacañang’s go-signal for construction to begin.
MILITARY INCIDENTS
Lt. Col. Garello said that the American soldiers’ role in the Lumbia Air Base will be facilitating trainings for humanitarian missions in the event of disasters and calamities in Northern Mindanao and participating in military exercises with the Philippine troops.
He also stressed that based on an agreement, the American soldiers will have more limited movement to avoid incidents such as that in 2014.
It can be recalled that months after EDCA was signed, US marine Joseph Scott Pemberton was charged for the brutal murder of the transgender Jennifer Laude, who was found in an Olongapo hotel room strangled, her head drowning in the toilet.
In 2015, Pemberton was found guilty for a lower sentence of homicide with 6 to 12 years at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa. However, as his lawyers invoked the VFA that required detention facilities to be agreed on by both the Philippines and US, he was allowed to serve time at an air-conditioned facility in Camp Aguinaldo. The detention facility there used to hold the coup-plotter-turned-senator Antonio Trillanes.
In 2020, Duterte granted Pemberton absolute pardon.