ANGELES CITY – “As government shows it has the least intention to develop Clark (as premier international gateway), Kapampangans should be allowed to do it and look for investors themselves.”
Thus proposed the advocacy group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement in the wake of a call by business tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan for Pampanga to “assert its rights” over the future of the Clark International Airport.
Pangilinan made the call Monday at the business forum held in celebration of his 68th birthday at the Holiday Inn Resort-Clark. In the same forum, Pangilinan tagged as “a very stupid argument” government’s contention of Clark being “too far” from Metro Manila in justifying its decision to look for other sites, particularly Sangley Point in Cavite, to build the country’s new international airport.
All it takes, Pangilinan noted, to close the distance is a fast train. The media-communications- power-mining magnate has for the past few years said he “is just waiting for a police statement from the Aquino government on Clark” and “is willing to sink in investments” for the former US base’s development, including the provision of a fast railway system to connect it to Metro Manila.
In fact, Pangilinan has offered to build and operate the CIA altogether.
Consortium
“MVP (Pangilinan) has the means to catalyse the development of the Clark airport. More important, his heart is in place, being a Kapampangan who wants to give the best to his people,” PGKM Chairman Ruperto Cruz said.
But aside from Pangilinan, there are, according to Cruz, groups both local and foreign interested in investing in the Clark airport through “consortiums.”
“It is so easy to sell Clark – if only with its aviation area of some 2,500 hectares, its world-class runways, its elevation that is totally flood-free,” Cruz said. “Yet, government should still look at Sangley which is prone to climate change effects like storm surges,” lamented Cruz, even as he pointed out “the massive, expensive and environment-degrading reclamation needed to add up to Sangley’s hectarage.”
The folly of a Sangley Point airport was just affirmed by Typhoon Glenda as the whole of Cavite province was declared under a state of calamity, he said.
At the height of the onslaught of the typhoon last Wednesday, news reports said the roads leading to Cavite were all flooded.
JICA report?
“The realities on the ground, especially in the wake of Glenda, has put in question the so-called JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) that purportedly named Sangley as the best site for a new international airport,” Cruz said.
This, as he challenged Transportation and Communications Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya to make public the said report.“Was Clark among those the JICA study considered along with Sangley, if there indeed is such a study?” Cruz asked.
Cruz recalled that on the contrary, JICA has made an earlier study naming the CIA as the best alternate airport to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. No less than Clark International Airport Corp. President-CEO Victor Jose Luciano has time and again referred to this “Clark-is-best” JICA report in his presentations of the CIA in various for a here and abroad.
Luciano mentioned this anew at Pangilinan’s business forum.
Vested interests
The PGKM said the Sangley Point airport will not work. “Clearly, politicians are out to sabotage the development of Central and Northern Luzon because of their own vested interests,” Cruz said.
“Lolokwan danaka ta namu ning national government (The national government is just making fools of us),” he added. “Kung ayaw may dahilan, kung gusto may paraan (If they don’t want it there’s a reason, if they want it there’s a way),” Cruz said.
DOTC Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya is a former congressman of Cavite that includes Sangley Point. His brother Peter Anthony Abaya is the general manager of the Philippine Reclamation Agency which will be in charge of the planned massive reclamation for the planned Sangley Point airport project.
Cruz said with Sangley Point, the airport would be distanced further from the rest of Central and Northern Luzon.
“Why do they say that the Clark airport is too far from Manila when in fact Cavite is much further from the rest of Luzon?” asked Cruz. “It’s better for the DOTC to just develop Sangley Point into a container port since it is near Manila Bay and the ports,” Cruz said.
The insistence of Sangley as “the new Manila airport” by Abaya has likewise “assumed political color.” “Who knows, this is one way of generating campaign funds for 2016,” Cruz said. Abaya is a stalwart of the Liberal Party and at one time was even referred to by President Aquino as “the next president.”
Conspiracy to sabotage
The Abayas along with “Manila-centric imperial dragons” and then Transpoirtation Secretary Mar Roxas have long been tagged by the PGKM as engaged in a “conspiracy to sabotage” the development of the CIA as premier international gateway.
Luciano is also accused of being part of that alleged conspiracy, along with the Bases Conversion Development Authority, and the Clark Development Corp. “Luciano is under the dictates of the DOTC. He is afraid to lose his job that is why instead of working for the full development of the airport, he is just working to save his own skin, afraid of losing his position,” Cruz said.
“Ing gagawan na para keng sarili na mu nung makananu yang manatili keng pwestu (What he’s doing is for his own interest only on how to remain in his position),” Cruz said.
