“I believe I can serve better in local governance,” Cauguiran said when pressed by members of the Capampangans In Media, Inc. (CAMI) to comment on reports he would seek the mayoral post in the 2019 local polls.
Cauguiran has been a close ally of incumbent Angeles Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan who is on his last mayoral term. He served as the mayor’s chief of staff prior to his CIAC appointment.
After the Americans left their former US Air Force base here in 1991, Cauiguiran pioneered in the move to transform the airport left by the US into a world class international airport.
This led then Pres. Fidel Ramos to issue an executive order declaring Clark as the future site of the country’s premier gateway.
“In the previous years, we only had birds that fl y over Clark. Now we have birds of steel,” he remarked.
During his term as CIAC acting president, Cauguiran has boosted the number of international and domestic flights at the airport which now hosts 152 international flights and 300 domestic flights per week.
“We can now fly to the US or Europe via connecting flights at either Dubai or Doha. We now have 20 domestic destinations,” he noted.
Cauguiran is known to have actively promoted patronage of the Clark airport by folk in North Luzon’s “catchment population” of some 21.4 million in provinces north of Metro Manila.
“Our connectivity is okay, since we have the NLEx, SCTEx, TPLEx, and the CLEx that can connect to Baler, Aurora via Nueva Ecija,” he said, expressing optimism that the railway linking Clark to Manila would be operational at the end of the Duterte administration.
Cauguiran also said he expected more international flights to be launched soon here, including regular flights to Osaka, Japan three times a week starting the end of March.
