THE CLARK Development Corp. is as ever in its three-monkey mode – no see, no hear, no talk.
The alarm sounded by the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement: that the Shell service station barely 500 meters from the southern approach to the runway of the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport “is an accident not waiting, but wanting to happen” has been met by the CDC with total silence.
No silence of the lamb for the CDC there though, but the silence of the dumb.
While a single press statement has yet to come out of CDC on the matter, an overload of information… okay, insinuations, speculations, allegations, and outright rumors, has saturated the informal channels between the Freeport and local media.
“The PGKM is barking up the wrong tree.” So said one CDC employee asking for anonymity for lack of speaking authority. “It is to the CIAC (the Clark International Airport Corp.) and the CAAP (Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, formerly Air Transportation Office) that the PGKM should have addressed its criticism, aviation security being the issue.”
The comment inevitably reaching the CIAC, a feedback naturally bounced off: “So, who entered into a lease contract with the Shell-Northwalk locator? Not CIAC but CDC. The CDC should stop pointing a dirty finger at us. Kung naghahanap sila ng damay, huwag kaming ituro. Hindi kami natutulog sa pansitan.”
Ouch! Aray! Kaplas!
Again, in the absence of any official CDC statement, we have to resort to the informal channels and we got – from our usually reliable CDC mole – that the lease agreement for the gas service station was signed near the close of the incumbency of Levy P. Laus as CDC president.
“You can call it a midnight deal,” alleged our source. Wonder what the clean-as-a-whistle LPL has to say about this implied maculation of his CDC administration. (Paging Jun Sula.)
It was actually a Korean firm that should have been awarded the lease to the location, our source claimed, “but for the shrewd maneuvering of one CDC vice president.” Hello, CDC VPs, anyone brave enough to raise a hand?
No hands raised there but an opening for scapegoating in the eased-out Korean firm.
“It is what’s-his-name Kim who is actually behind this CDC discrediting on Shell-Northwalk Clark. Sore as he is over his loss of the prime location.” So went another informal info out of the CDC grapevine.
Kim? The Korean firm’s owner is named Kim?
“No, Kim there is used as generic name for all Koreans,” so said the source, still adhering to the CDC’s no-talk diktat.
So, how can you be so accurate in fingering this Kim?
“So, why was the Shell station singled out as posing a ‘clear and present danger’ to planes using the DMIA? Isn’t the Flying V station also along the supposed flight path? How about the Yokohama plant which height and store of chemicals would make as volatile, if not an even greater, danger to planes?”
Now, the CAAP must be made to answer here. It sets height restrictions on buildings within some five- to ten-kilometer radius of the DMIAA and yet it allowed these highly flammable gas stations to be put up by the very runway of the DMIA, and Yokohama too. The PGKM or some other advocacy group must surely have taken note of this.
Be that as it may, the CDC’s silence over the issue, as in some other issues, is an admission, not necessarily of guilt, but most certainly of dumbness.
The alarm sounded by the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement: that the Shell service station barely 500 meters from the southern approach to the runway of the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport “is an accident not waiting, but wanting to happen” has been met by the CDC with total silence.
No silence of the lamb for the CDC there though, but the silence of the dumb.
While a single press statement has yet to come out of CDC on the matter, an overload of information… okay, insinuations, speculations, allegations, and outright rumors, has saturated the informal channels between the Freeport and local media.
“The PGKM is barking up the wrong tree.” So said one CDC employee asking for anonymity for lack of speaking authority. “It is to the CIAC (the Clark International Airport Corp.) and the CAAP (Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, formerly Air Transportation Office) that the PGKM should have addressed its criticism, aviation security being the issue.”
The comment inevitably reaching the CIAC, a feedback naturally bounced off: “So, who entered into a lease contract with the Shell-Northwalk locator? Not CIAC but CDC. The CDC should stop pointing a dirty finger at us. Kung naghahanap sila ng damay, huwag kaming ituro. Hindi kami natutulog sa pansitan.”
Ouch! Aray! Kaplas!
Again, in the absence of any official CDC statement, we have to resort to the informal channels and we got – from our usually reliable CDC mole – that the lease agreement for the gas service station was signed near the close of the incumbency of Levy P. Laus as CDC president.
“You can call it a midnight deal,” alleged our source. Wonder what the clean-as-a-whistle LPL has to say about this implied maculation of his CDC administration. (Paging Jun Sula.)
It was actually a Korean firm that should have been awarded the lease to the location, our source claimed, “but for the shrewd maneuvering of one CDC vice president.” Hello, CDC VPs, anyone brave enough to raise a hand?
No hands raised there but an opening for scapegoating in the eased-out Korean firm.
“It is what’s-his-name Kim who is actually behind this CDC discrediting on Shell-Northwalk Clark. Sore as he is over his loss of the prime location.” So went another informal info out of the CDC grapevine.
Kim? The Korean firm’s owner is named Kim?
“No, Kim there is used as generic name for all Koreans,” so said the source, still adhering to the CDC’s no-talk diktat.
So, how can you be so accurate in fingering this Kim?
“So, why was the Shell station singled out as posing a ‘clear and present danger’ to planes using the DMIA? Isn’t the Flying V station also along the supposed flight path? How about the Yokohama plant which height and store of chemicals would make as volatile, if not an even greater, danger to planes?”
Now, the CAAP must be made to answer here. It sets height restrictions on buildings within some five- to ten-kilometer radius of the DMIAA and yet it allowed these highly flammable gas stations to be put up by the very runway of the DMIA, and Yokohama too. The PGKM or some other advocacy group must surely have taken note of this.
Be that as it may, the CDC’s silence over the issue, as in some other issues, is an admission, not necessarily of guilt, but most certainly of dumbness.
