CLARK FREEPORT – Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and President Aquino both showed indecisiveness when it came to the place of the Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) in the government-led conversion of this former US Air Force base into the country’s leading international gateway.
Some business leaders said this was why, despite efforts and unparalleled potentials, the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) has not taken off in the last 19 years to the detriment of the full development of Clark and northern and central Luzon.
Between 2001 and 2008, Arroyo tossed the CIAC four times as a subsidiary to either its original parent, the Clark Development Corp. (CDC), or to CDC’s parent, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), documents showed.
The assertion of independence by the CIAC from CDC and CDC’s assertion of supervision over the firm were signs that each was scrambling to take control over what would be a revenue-rich DMIA, a CIAC official told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
A local official suspected that the CIAC-CDC conflict, aided by politicians, was a proxy war among local airlines.
So while Arroyo dilly-dallied with the open skies policy for DMIA, she also did not end the conflict regarding which agency should be directly in charge of the development of the airport.
Save for new appointees, a new order has yet to emerge in Clark where Mr. Aquino’s two cousins have past and current business interests. Rizza Oreta was part of a consortium that sought to build DMIA’s Terminal 2 during Arroyo’s time. Antonio “Tony Boy” Cojuangco is one of three partners of Air Asia in the Philippines, one of the airlines operating from the DMIA.
Rufo Colayco, former president of CDC and BCDA, said the CIAC, as a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC, “ought to take directions from the CDC in the same manner that CDC, as a wholly owned subsidiary of the BCDA, ought to take policy directions from BCDA.”
Colayco said this has never materialized because in the past 10 years, the “development of Clark has been seriously hampered by a situation in which Malacañang set aside this fundamental structure.”
“The CIAC thus emerged as a rival entity to CDC,” he said.
When Felipe Antonio Remollo, new CDC president and chief executive officer, proposed in May the return of the CIAC to the CDC, Mr. Aquino accepted the decision of BCDA, CDC and CIAC leaders to let things remain as Arroyo left it.
“It’s a status quo,” Remollo said on Friday, saying the consensus was reached in a meeting in June.
The issue is over, said BCDA Chair Felicito Payumo. “We have since agreed that both the CIAC and CDC shall be subsidiaries of BCDA,” he said.
At least they clarified the distinction between the functions of the two agencies, he said.
For instance, he said the CIAC would concentrate on aviation-related tasks and activities such as the expansion and modernization of the terminal.
The CDC, on the other hand, would continue the conversion of the former military lands into productive and economic uses. This means that the CDC will continue to approve leases for commercial activities.
But while the three agencies came to a compromise, documents showed a long-running tug-of-war with long-term implications on the growth of DMIA and regions near it.
An “impractical idea” was how former CDC president Emmanuel Angeles called the proposed return of the CIAC to the CDC.
“One agency has to focus,” said Angeles, under whose term the two agencies were merged and then separated.
“The best alternative [to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport] is still the Clark airport.”
Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan of Angeles, the city next to Clark, did not mind where else the CIAC would be put under. His only condition is the CDC would not take a big portion of the Clark civil aviation complex for leases to new locators.
“Otherwise we will be defeating the very purpose of putting up the premier international airport in the country. We don’t want to experience what happened to Naia in Parañaque. [There would be] no more room for expansion,” said Pamintuan, former chair of the Subic-Clark Alliance Development Council.