CLARK FREEPORT—Benigno Layug Aquino and Ruperto Cruz reacted differently as allies of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the board of the state-owned Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) debated on what name was apt for the 2,500-hectare airport that the US Air Force left in Pampanga 21 years ago.
The conflict ensued after the CIAC, in an Oct. 14, 2011, resolution initiated by CIAC vice chair Felipe Antonio Remollo, dropped the name Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) from the Clark facility and renamed it Clark International Airport (CIA).
The name of Macapagal, the country’s ninth president, was instead assigned by CIAC to the new terminal, which was built toward the end of his daughter’s presidency.
Amid the brouhaha, Aquino, a former base worker, brimmed with hope because the row over the name change invited a lot of attention to the airport that he joined in 1995, or less than a year before the agency was created.
“I hope my namesake (President Aquino) could put more life in the Clark airport and develop it fully,” Aquino said. (At the CIAC security department where he works as a pass control officer, he goes by the name “Ninoy.”)
Cruz, a Kapampangan and president of the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM), regards the quarrel over the airport’s name a secondary issue.
“What is most important here is the state of the affairs at the airport and the agency running it,” said Cruz, whose group has been monitoring the development of CIA since Day 1 of Clark’s conversion.
But for Cruz, the loss of the name DMIA should be blamed on Arroyo and her allies. Not one of them went to Congress during her term to rename the CIA after her father—a condition set by the board of Clark Development Corp. (CDC) in 2001.
Slow to very slow
“Slow” to “very slow” was how six officials, in separate interviews, described the development of the CIA in the last 18 years.
“In the last three or four years, the development has been fast-tracked, but before that, let’s face it, nothing much happened [at the CIA],” said Felicito Payumo, chair of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, and one of the chief planners of the Central Luzon development program.
Although consultations held in 1990 by the Legislative-Executive Base Conversion Council hinged the redevelopment of the Clark Air Base on the airport, the rehabilitation of the former facility from the devastation wrought by
Mt. Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption occupied much of government’s focus then, Payumo said. The council set the transfer of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) to Clark in 2005.
As jobs were scarce after the Pinatubo eruption and pullout of American troops, CDC marketed Clark as a business and industrial zone.
The delay was also due to the “Manila-centric” orientation of groups that prefer the Naia as the country’s premier gateway, Payumo said.
Victor Jose Luciano, CIAC president, said the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and a provision in the Naia’s Terminal 3 project that limited the development of other airports had slowed down the growth of the CIA. He also said Arroyo’s withdrawal of an open skies policy for the CIA slackened interest among aviation players.
So within the 18-year span, the CIA lagged as Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea went full speed in developing their airports.
The BCDA and its subsidiaries, CDC and CIAC, have spent some P3 billion for the Clark airport, an amount that is small when compared to the P100 billion spent on some airports in Asia, said Arnel Paciano Casanova, BCDA president.
In 2007, CIA, through a loan, got a new radar worth P419 million. Its Terminal 1, worth P130 million, was finished in 2008.
Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas said the low expenditure on Clark was driven by a situation then.
“No aircraft was landing there,” Roxas said in Filipino. President Aquino, through Executive Order No. 64, attached the CIAC to the Department of Transportation and Communications in December to ensure the continued development of the Clark Civil Aviation Complex.
Roxas, who is also the CIAC chair, is clear on where he is taking the CIA. “The long term plan is to transfer the Naia to Clark, but this is based on the progress of negotiation for the NorthRail,” he said.