“IT IS Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) no more.”
So opened the story of the intrepid Tonette Orejas in the Philippine Daily Inquirer Monday.
Continued the story: “The name of the country’s ninth president would be dropped from the airport in this economic zone and would be used instead in a soon-to-rise terminal for passengers served by international and domestic budget airlines, the head of the Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) said.
“In dropping the name of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s father, the airport would revert to its original name—Clark International Airport (CIA)—thus needing no executive order, congressional fiat or resolution from the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, said Victor Jose Luciano, CIAC president and chief executive officer. He said the name comes with a new corporate logo.
“We will project Clark as Clark, including its history,” Luciano said.
A survey showed that domestic and international aviation players know the airport more to be Clark than DMIA, Luciano said.”
The erudite Ding Cervantes wrote in the Philippine Star also on Monday what could well be the continuation of Tonette’s story:
“With the name of former Pres. Diosdado Macapagal now relegated only to the passenger terminal, the rechristened Clark International Airport (CIA) here will get a P1-billion loan from the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) for upgrading works.
“I will sign the loan agreement on Feb. 21 and this loan manifests confidence in the progress now happening at the airport,” said Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) president and chief executive officer Victor Jose Luciano.
This, even as Luciano debunked speculations that the renaming of the 2,400 aviation complex under the CIAC was politically motivated.
“Pres. Aquino had nothing to do with it. It’s just that the (CIAC) board thought old name Clark is most pragmatic since the name has been known internationally through almost a century of its being a part of the US military base,” he explained in a press briefing here.
There’s really nothing new to the DMIA reverting to CIA. As a matter of practice, Punto since 2010 has been using CIA in its stories, retaining DMIA only in direct quotes.
Only last November, I had my take on the issue, hereunder reprinted in full:
WHAT’S IN a name?
A rose, so the Bard says, by any other name will smell just as sweet.
No big deal in naming or renaming things really. Names don’t alter the essence of things. As that wag says: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then – by God – it’s a duck. Whether it’s called Daffy or Donald, matters not.
So by all means, revert Diosdado Macapagal International Airport to the very generic Clark International Airport.
From DMIA to CIA, so did we sense some allusion to cloak-and-dagger there?
The intensity – publicly perceived, at least – with which President Aquino is going after his predecessor may be (mis)construed as being the force behind the planned renaming of DMIA.
A means, some minds, both malicious and innocent hold, to exorcise the struggling airport of the Macapagal-Arroyo name consistently and constantly demonized in strings of criminal and administrative cases that – to this time – have yet to find their way in the proper courts.
Thoughts that are within the ken of former Capas Mayor Rey Catacutan, currently Clark International Airport Corp. vice president for operations, in saying the renaming issue could well be “politically sensitive.”
But not to the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement, the advocacy group that has been clamouring – even marching, rallying, and going to court – for the full operationalization of the Clark airport as premier international gateway.
The PGKM’s Pert Cruz acquiesced “with guarded optimism” to the naming of the Clark airport as DMIA in 2003, hoping that it shall effect its international airport status, with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as catalyst.
Indeed, the Capampangans then had high hopes that the daughter would make good her father’s promised but undelivered caduang apag (second serving) to their cabalens with a fully functioning, multi-flight DMIA.
High hopes crashing with the perpetual spurts and starts and misses there, from now-flying-now-lying airlines to the terminal scams, from the inoperable skybridges to the cable theft, to the current turf war at CIAC.
These notwithstanding President Arroyo’s EO 500 in January 2006 unilaterally proclaiming an open skies policy at Clark.
That which was hailed by the Wall Street Journal-Asia as “the move (that) unleashed the forces of liberalization at Clark by allowing foreign airlines to fly in hundreds of thousands of tourists from Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and as far as Dubai. It also opened the door to all the trade that could be conducted via the cargo holds of such airlines.”
That which was shot down by Arroyo herself, reportedly on “strong lobbying by the imperial dragons,” with EO 500-A which slowed down and then totally grounded to a halt airline traffic and limited foreign airline’s access to the DMIA and the Subic International Airport.
Hence PGKM’s coming to find meaning in the DMIA as the Dead Macapagal International Airport or the Di Matuluy-tuloy na International Airport or the Di Maipagmamalaking International Airport, to cite but three.
Yeah, what good could ever come out of an airport with a curse for a name when pronounced? Damn, ya!
Renaming the DMIA to CIA goes well beyond the political to the practical.
At the time of the declaration of Clark as a special economic zone, the proposal to rename it after a Filipino hero or statesman, like Recto or Roxas, for nationalist purposes was shot down.
It was argued that Clark is already known globally and thus can be capitalized on to attract investors. (For the record, Clark US Air Force Base was named after Maj. Harold Clark of the US Army Signal Corps who died in a seaplane crash in the Panama Canal on May 2, 1919.)
Amusing too – sometimes even insulting – the tongue-twisting foreign pilots had to go through announcing the approach to DMIA as Dee-yos-day-do Mah-kah-paal international airport.
From its American military past until its DMIA present, the international code name for the Clark airport has remained “CRK.”
Clark International Airport is therefore but its rightful name. DMIA is but a transitory political accommodation serving no purpose other than sheer obsequiousness to some powers- that-be, that now are not.
MAYBE, aye, it could be that DMIA is jinxed – as in DiMalas na International Airport. Look what has been coming to Clark – more airlines, more flights, more funds – since November when the name change first came to light.
