CLARK FREEPORT – Keep Pres. Aquino out of the issue of junking the name of the late father of detained ex-Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the international airport here.
Feuding Clark Development Corp. (CDC) president Felipe Remollo and Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) president Victor Jose Luciano have found common ground in exonerating the President from the controversy on the scrapping of the name Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) in favor of Clark International Airport (CIA).
Despite protests from Kapampangan leaders, both Remollo and Luciano stood their ground and insisted that there was no legal basis for using the name Diosdado Macapagal as the CIAC resolution that proposed this in 2001 provided the need for legislation.
No such legislation followed, Remollo and Luciano said. Remollo lamented that the issue has taken on political color. Both insisted that Pres. Aquino had nothing to do with the dropping of the name of the late president, father of detained ex-Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Last Friday, some Kapampangan mayors met with Luciano to protest his earlier announcement that the airport here would revert back to its old name Clark International Airport (CIA).
Remollo said, however, that the use of the name Clark was based on a “collegial and unanimous decision of the CIAC board way back on October 14 last year even before former Pres. Arroyo was detained on charges of electoral sabotage.
The resolution was titled “Restoration of the Name Clark International Airport to Refer to the Clark Civil Aviation Complex within the Clark Freeport Zone to Enhance its International Acceptance and to Preserve its Historical Significance.”
But both Luciano and Remollo pointed finger to each other for the controversy that ensued after the former revealed in a press briefing recently the change of the airport’s name.
“Luciano wanted to take credit and announced it prematurely even before the reason for the move could be fully explained to the stakeholders,” Remollo said, noting that Luciano was signatory to the 2001 resolution that named the airport after the late president and was also signatory to the resolution last October reverting the name of the airport to Clark.
For his part, Luciano said the proposal was initiated by Remollo as concurrent acting chairman of the CIAC.
However, records from the CIAC indicated that while Remollo presided over the CIAC board meeting last October, the motion to revert back to the Clark name was made by one Director Fernandez, and seconded by Director Bienvenido Manga.
The resolution also said that the airport’s “Terminal 1 will be named as Diosdado Macapagal Terminal (DMT) in recognition of the legacy of the former President Diosdado P. Macapagal as the first Kapampangan to become the President of the Republic of the Philippines.”
Remollo noted that the move to shift back to the Clark name was a “matter of branding” as this Freeport has been known by that name for almost a century when the Americans established initially a cavalry, and then a military base here up to their departure in 1991.
“Only recently the Japanese ambassador who was to guest at Clark reached Tarlac instead because the signage along the North Luzon Expressway indicated DMIA.
That would not have happened had we simply indicated Clark because most people are familiar with that name,” he added.
Luciano insisted that the airport here should keep the name Clark in the absence of any legal justification for the Macapagal name. “I told the (Kapampangan) mayors that the renaming (after) Diosdado Macapagal was never legislated so its use is defective,” he added.
Remollo lamented the controversy on the name, saying that the “branding” of Clark was part of the more important issue of realizing plans to make this Freeport the country’s premiere international gateway.
“That plan dated back to 1994 during the term of former Pres. Ramos, and through the nine years of ex-Pres. Arroyo was never realized.
Now, we have lured the ‘taipans’ who initially were reluctant to come into Clark so that we can realize that dream. This should be the focus,” he stressed.
Former CIAC executive vice president Alex Cauguiran decried the use of the Clark name which, he insisted, also had not legal basis since it was not legislated.
