CLARK FREEPORT – Game over in 2016.
“The year the administration of President Aquino ends shall mark the end too of all hopes for the development of the Clark International Airport as premier international gateway,” declared Ruperto Cruz, chairman of the advocacy group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement.
“If PNoy – a Kapampangan whose home province of Tarlac is a direct beneficiary to the full development of the airport – failed to tap its full potential, how much less should we expect his successor to do one over him in this respect?” Cruz asked.
He said the high hopes for the development of the CIA to be premier airport when Kapampangan Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became president came crashing down when “all she accomplished was to name the airport after her father.”
The ascendancy of another Kapampangan president in Aquino raised hopes anew, Cruz said, as the CIA could be “his best legacy to his home region as well as North Luzon, and in general to the whole nation.”
“Unfortunately, people high up in the administration appear to be in a conspiracy with Manila- centric vested interest groups to sabotage the development of the CIA, starting with (Mar) Roxas when he was at DOTC ” lamented Cruz.
The pronouncements of the Department of Transportation and Communications and the Clark International Airport Corp. on “purported” developments at the CIA, according to Cruz, “are actually smokescreens to hide their true malevolent intent.”
At the maiden Dubai- Clark-Dubai flight of Emirates Airlines two weeks ago, DOTC Secretary Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya said the government is considering to build a P7.2-billion low cost carrier terminal (LCC) at the CIA, citing its potential as “gateway of the country.”
PDAF way
“We are being bombarded with mind-boggling amount for the Clark airport which when examined are reduced to nothing more than propaganda and thereby raise some suspicions as to their purpose,” Cruz said.
“First, there was this P1-billion loan the CIAC contracted with the LandBank said to be for the terminal building, followed by P1.3 billion from the DOTC, again for the terminal and some other infra and equipment for the airport. Now we are told of this P7.2 billion for LCC,” Cruz noted.
“Now compare this to the P360 million cost of the passenger terminal building that CIAC failed to finish on its promised date of Sept. 30, and the announced P400 million fencing CIAC announced to start in January next year,” Cruz said. “That would total P760 million as against the P2.3 billion from the combined LandBank loan and the DOTC fund. So, where is the remaining P1.54 billion?
Gone somewhere other than Clark?” Cruz said his group would not be surprised, if the “excess funds went the way of the PDAF and DAP.“
“For all we know, the Clark airport may be living up to wide speculations that it serves as a rich source of campaign funds, as it was said in past elections,” Cruz said.
Unprogrammed
Cruz likewise has challenged Abaya to “put his money where his mouth is” with his P7.2-billion LCC announcement. “Staggering as it is, government would be hard put to put up with that amount,” Cruz said.
Recent developments made virtual confirmation of Cruz’s pessimism. Pampanga 1st District Rep. Joseller “Yeng” Guiao has been reported to be lobbying for the inclusion of P7.2 billion in the line-item budget of the DOTC for the construction of an international terminal in Clark.
Guiao was quoted as saying the amount was yet to be included in the “un-programmed budget” of DOTC which means that it may even be allocated to projects other than those for the Clark airport.
The neophyte congressman said he wanted the amount “to be included in the 2014-2015 budget of DOTC and not for any other projects.”
Feasibility study
Abaya has said a feasibility study on the P7.2-billion LCC project is set to be undertaken by French airport operator Aeroports de Paris. Cruz said this is yet another “delaying tactic, if not an excuse not to develop CIA.”
“Another feasibility study after all those costly feasibility studies in the past, the grandest of which was an Aerotropolis at the time of (then CDC President Emmanuel) Angeles, with no actual application of any of the studies,” Cruz said, warning that “in the meantime, time is ticking fast towards 2016.”
“Absolutely, all these DOTC gimmickry would not go even past the drawing board by 2016,” Cruz said. “And the people of Central and Northern Luzon will again be left with nothing but a bagful of air.”
Airport Express
Like Cruz, Guiao may have set his eyes on a 2016 end-game for the development of the CIA.
At a recent meeting of the Regional Development Council 3, DOTC Director Deo Leo Manalo reported on the Airport Express Railway (AER) project which include the development of a commuter train from Malolos City to Caloocan for Phase 1-A; Caloocan to FTI Taguig for Phase 1-B; and Malolos City to Clark for Phase 2 which he described only as “planned.”
Guiao countered that the time to fast-track the connectivity between NAIA and Clark airport “is now or in the immediate future and not 20 years after the Malolos- Caloocan- FTI Taguig route is completed.”
Guiao was joined by other RDC members led by Bulacan Gov. Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado in coming up with united front to campaign to redirect the planned AER from Malolos City-Caloocan- FTI Taguig down south to Manila/NAIA- Clark up north instead.
Clark link
In an interview at the sidelines of the maiden Emirates flight, Abaya also talked of a proposed North Integrated Luzon Railway to run from Cagayan Valley to Sorsogon province in Bicol to include a link to the CIA.
“It would not be difficult to run a spur leg along those rails servicing Clark. That is how we see a rail system servicing Clark,” Abaya was quoted as saying. The lack of a rail system between Metro Manila and Clark has long been given as primary excuse for its failing short of being premier gateway.
This, even as business mogul Manny V. Pangilinan has long expressed his confidence in and capability to build the Manila-Clark fast train system via the North Luzon Expressway which one of his companies operates.
Pangilinan said all he needed to push through is a “policy statement and priority pronouncement of the Aquino administration on the Clark airport as premier gateway.”
‘Sangley agenda’
Abaya’s report of the North Integrated Luzon Railway raised suspicions in the PGKM of “railroading” the CIA development to “serve Abaya’s Sangley agenda.”
Last April, Abaya announced a foreign-local consortium called All-Asia Resources and Reclamation Corp. (ARRC) seeking to redevelop Sangley Point in Cavite into an international airport to be named Aquino-Sangley International Airport and an international seaport dubbed the Aguinaldo- Sangley International Seaport.
The ARRC pointed out the constriction of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and denigrated the Clark airport as inferior to Sangley which expansion ARRC would pursue through reclamation.
The PGKM cried politics and vested interests in Abaya’s statements on the ARRC plan, noting that Abaya and his brother, Peter Anthony Abaya, chief of the Philippine Reclamation Authority that shall also be involved in the ARRC scheme, are from Cavite.
“We fear that the integrated railway that is supposed to go down to Sorsogon may end up in Sangley,” Cruz said.
