ANGELES CITY – In the light of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or the so called pork barrel fund controversy which has created maelstrom in the country, the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM) has renewed its call for its junking and tied it to its advocacy for the Clark airport.
It can be recalled that the PGKM joined calls for the scrapping of the pork barrel fund as early as the first week of July when the new mayor of Candaba town put up streamers welcoming the Napoles family to his inauguration as news reports of the multi-billion corruption first started to come out.
PGKM Chair Ruperto Cruz noted that the combined pork barrel fund of Kapampangan legislators which totals P480 million would have been enough to start the construction of a modern and larger airline passenger terminal at the Clark International Airport (CIA).
“Kesa ke sasalikut dala keng medyas ampo keng maleta, makasaup la pang maragul keng balen (Instead of just hiding them in socks and luggage, (the pork barrel) can be a great help to the nation),” he said.
“Nung deretsu yamu ing construction, yari nesa ing terminal (If only the construction had begun and gone unhampered, the terminal would have been finished by now),” he added.
Hallucination
Cruz said the government should stop its hallucination of creating an airport in Sangley Point which would better serve as “a submarine base” owing to its proclivity to flooding Cruz asked: Why did the Americans abandon Sangley? Because it’s always under water, he said.
“The Americans knew for sure that Sangley was inferior to Subic in naval terms, and even much less in aviation terms to Clark. Or they would have made it both their main air and naval base,” Cruz has said.
“To think that Sangley Point is a protection for the US Embassy because of its proximity and yet they abandoned it,” he said.
History will show that plans were in the works for the construction of a new school when official word came on December 10, 1970 that Naval Station Sangley Point was to terminate operations as a U.S. facility.
“Hectic and chaotic days followed that fateful announcement. Things would never be the same at Sangley.
Everyone began to pack up and ship everything to the States or to other military facilities.”
Cruz said Caviteños even rallied for the Americans to come back in Sangley with placards: “Yankees come back” but to no avail.
Global misplaced
Meanwhile, Cruz said the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) as well as its subsidiary the Clark Development Corp. (CDC) should not have even allowed the Global Gateway Logistics City (GGLC) to lease 177 hectares of prime lands which restricted the airport runway.
He said the CDC should have transferred the GGLC to the Clark special economic zone and its vast area would have otherwise been relegated for the airport expansion.
Cruz said the GGLC area should be for airport related facilities like hangars, repair facilities, etc.
“They (BCDA) don’t know how to develop Clark,” Cruz said. “Even the Bayanihan Park now is being leased out,” he added.
Cruz said the BCDA should have corrected the mistakes of the past and put the immediate and full development of the airport as its top agenda.
But sadly, they even competed with local entrepreneurs, he lamented.
“If they did their jobs then SM would not have even been here where even siopao and popcorn are on sale,” he said.
