CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga?From the Americans to the Kuwaitis.

That, in sum, is how control of the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) and the rest of the 2,500-hectare civil aviation complex here will play out, when plans allegedly steered by Trade Secretary Peter Favila and Batangas Rep. Hermilando Mandanas materialize.

?Not only is this ironic but stupid,? said an Inquirer source, an official of the state-owned Clark International Airport Corp. (Ciac).

The Ciac manages these prime government assets which were leased by the United States Air Force until 1991.

Like the debacle surrounding US presence at Clark, questions about sovereignty also hound the airport development today.

Surrender of independence

A Kuwait-based group, Al Mal-Pride Consortium, reportedly won the contract for the development, operations and management of the DMIA Terminals 1, 2 and 3 project through a joint venture agreement with the Ciac.

What is raising concern is a provision regarding the ?waiver of sovereign immunity,? said the source, who asked not be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The source was among the Ciac officials who went to Kuwait from March 3-8 to discuss the contract?s terms of agreement with Al Mal.

?An outcome of that [trip obliges] the government [to] waive its right not to be sued. It waives its status of governance power in the country and power of rule and becomes like any other person natural or juridical,? the source said.

?When granted to foreign entities, it is a virtual surrender of independence as a sovereign nation,? the source added.

Workers? walkout

Losing out Ciac to Al Mal and its Filipino partner, Pride, has alarmed Ciac employees.

They walked out, honked their cars and sounded off the company?s sirens before the close of office hours on Thursday.

Ciac Chair Nestor Mangio, who attended the March 3-8 talks in Kuwait, denied that Favila and Mandanas have personal stakes in the contract.

?Secretary Favila is in charge of foreign investments. Congressman Mandanas was present when President Arroyo met [M.A] Kharafi and his sons in Davos [Switzerland in January 2009],? Mangio said.

Al Mal is an investment company of MA Kharafi Group while Pride is its Filipino partner.

The Union of Ciac employees, in a statement, called the terms ?disadvantageous to the Philippine government.? A Kuwaiti takeover of the airport complex will ban government employees like them from applying for a year, they said. Terminal 1 will be handed at a cost of $20 million when its expected earning is $120 million in 45 years, the duration of the contract.

70-30

The investment of $100 million for Terminal 2 will be done under a 70-30 ownership, which is against the 60-40 sharing rule in favor of the Philippines.

One of the terms includes a ban on the development of a new airport within the 50-km radius of DMIA during the development of Terminal 3.

?The Kuwaiti proposal was already junked by the Ciac board but Chairman Nestor Mangio had been allegedly misleading President Macapagal-Arroyo into believing that the Kuwaiti group will invest $1.2 billion through a joint venture with Ciac,? the union said in a statement.

It questioned the capacity of Al Mal because of being supposedly cash-strapped.

Mangio said there should be no worry because ?there?s no contract yet and we have not agreed on the terms.?

?We will still open this to competitive bidding,? he said.

Rules

In the talks, he said he and Ciac officials ?emphasized that rules and laws of the Philippines should be followed.?

?We cannot agree to them. We came out empty-handed but they?re still interested,? he said.

The Ciac, he said, gave Al Mal seven days to answer the issues raised against some terms in the agreement.

Mandanas said his main participation in the project was to invite Al-Kharafi to invest in the Philippines.

?Actually, I have invited Al-Kharafi in 2006 to invest in Batangas. I also introduced him to President Arroyo and when they (Ms Arroyo and Al-Kharafi) had a conversation, Diosdado Macapagal International Airport became Al-Kharafi?s interest,? he said.

?I am just trying to help,? Mandanas said, adding that he is no longer involved in whatever is happening now between the Ciac and the Kuwaiti firm. With a report from Marrah Erika Lesaba, Inquirer Southern Luzon