Idiots at the gate

FUTURE PREMIER international gateway.

Thus was the Clark International Airport ordained to be by Executive Order 174 issued by President Ramos in 1994. Twenty one years past, the CIA’s present has remained all too distant to its future sense.

Where the CIA is virtually frozen in some back-to-the-future time warp, the gateway to the Clark Freeport is by contrast caught in a dynamics of constant change.

Before the end of last month, the Clark Development Corp. press released that “the construction of a new main gate structure at the Clark Freeport zone is set for implementation to make the Freeport more distinct, vibrant and attractive to tourists and residents.”

Allotted P10 million, the new main gate will have as primary feature “a huge LED-TV to welcome Clark visitors” that will also “flash hotline numbers, major points of interests and events in the Freeport zone.”
Why a new main gate when there’s one by the Clark Veterans Cemetery built at the tail end of the CDC presidency of Benny Ricafort – if ageing memory still serves right – immediately before the glorious coming of the Tatalonian toughie?

Well, according to the CDC in its PR, that’s called a “control gate” intended for “access control and security purposes.” Emphasizing that “it is not a replacement of the main gate.”

Call me a dummy, but ain’t a gate – with either “control” or “main” as modifier – essentially a barrier meant to control access and ensure security?

And that “control gate” has been, for some years now, serving as the main gate of the freeport. Efficiently, if I may add, in welcoming visitors and investors to Clark. Not so effectively in controlling smuggling, if I heard it right from some disgruntled CDC security staff themselves.  

Still, declared the CDC in its PR: “The Main Gate serves as a basis in the establishment of boundary of Clark Freeport Zone under Republic Act 9400.” 
RA 9400 approved by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on March 20, 2007 made amendments to RA 7227 or the Bases Conversion Development Act, among which is the “exception” from the Clark Freeport area of “the twenty-two-hectare commercial area situated near the main gate and the Bayanihan Park consisting of seven and a half hectares (7.5 has.) located outside the main gate of the Clark Special Economic Zone.” 

Again, if memory serves right, it was this exception that pushed back the Clark gate to the current “control gate” clearly defining the boundaries that excluded SM City Clark from the duty- and tax-free privileges accruing to the freeport locators. It was, as claimed by the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement, GMA’s way of levelling the playing field to deny the giant enterprise undue advantage over the city’s small traders and retailers.   

With the “control gate” established, the old main gate was left to the mercies of the elements and vagrants answering nature’s call, becoming – as CDC put it – “dilapidated and was torn down few months ago to give way to a new structure.”

Memory, imperfect as it may be, on a roll now: That old main gate was actually the second incarnation of the main gate since the establishment of the Clark Special Economic Zone.

It was constructed at a cost of P14 million during the CDC presidency of Levy Laus to “lend global corporate appeal” to the freeport, so it was bruited then, in keeping with the corporate image of Laus.

That gate, in turn, replaced the massive edifice constructed during the CDC presidency of Gen. Romeo S. David at a reported budget of P30 million. The cost justified in the immensity of the structure and its aesthetic complements of  waterfalls, a terraced garden and bamboo groves by its egress side. Only the bamboos give a trace now of what was once a very welcoming, refreshing sight to Clark.

Just reading the cost of construction – and the subsequent destruction – of the Clark main gate gives one some sense of waste, of profligacy, of sayang na sayang in Tagalog.

Yet, a new main gate costing P10 million is set to be constructed again to serve “as a basis in the establishment of boundary of Clark Freeport Zone under Republic Act 9400.”

What is to be seen there?

Where exclusion was the intent in the previous invocation of RA 9400 applying to SM City Clark, inclusion seems the objective now in the case of the Green Frontier project of the Singaporean firm Capilion Corp. Pte. Ltd. for its availment of duty- and tax-free privileges and other perks as Clark locator.

Interesting where the new gate will be sited. 

Wherever though, it can only aggravate the constriction of the main entry to Clark already poised by the Capilion project and the Honda-Clark showroom-service center allowed to locate there.

And put the lie to what CDC said as its express intent “to make the Freeport more distinct, vibrant and attractive to tourists and residents.”

Only in this BS of an administration can road constriction by heavy traffic deemed vibrant and attractive. Yeah, as in the traffic standstill at EDSA deemed non-fatal, hailed as a sign of progress.

Too bad no gate can control the rush, aye, the crush of idiocy in this administration.