Throwing critics

SHOULDN’T YOU be afraid?

Asked a worried friend soon as Ashley Manabat and I sat down on a table at Krispy Kreme, SM City Clark for our post-editing coffee and doughnuts.

Afraid of what?

Of the two of you being thrown at the Clark Development Corp. for your criticism of Tugade.

What nonsense!

Nonsense? But it’s in your paper today. You admit now to publishing nonsense?

The guy shoving to my face the front page of a crisp copy of Punto! Oct. 5-6, 2015 issue.

Under the headline Ex-CDC prexy rallies Tugade and Clark execs reads the second paragraph: Levy P. Laus, chairman and CEO of the Laus Group of Companies (LGC) rallied CDC officials led by Arthur P. Tugade to continue developing Clark despite critics thrown at them. (Underscoring here for clarity of what he meant.)

Whoaa!

No way the highly esteemed Sir Levy could have been anything as sadistically  homicidal as to suggest critics be thrown at the CDC.  

“Critics” clearly mistyped for “criticism” there. Watch your praise releases, CDC Communications Dept. You’ve just smeared Sir Levy’s gentle-as-a-lamb persona. 

As a policy, we at Punto! do not edit press releases or any unsolicited articles sent to us. If only to avoid any charge of spinning the stories. We just publish them as is, unabridged, unedited with the corresponding taglines to show where they come from. The lapses in syntax and grammar, even in logic, the sole responsibility, hence to the utter shame, of the sender.

But for that typing gaffe, the story is no nonsense and more, with its appeal to the mind and heart. I can almost see the Tatalonian Toughie melting into tears with Sir Levy’s soothing counsel.

“Critics will always be critics,” Laus said.
Laus, also Chairman Emeritus of Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industries cited CDC and its officials for various development and investment projects being implemented amidst criticisms.

“It’s very challenging to make everybody believe that what you are doing is right. There will always be opinionated people who will say it’s (decisions) wrong, but nonetheless, I think it’s eventually the end that would justify how these decisions are made,” Laus said.

Sir Levy knows – and feels – whereof he speaks. Having been there, done that, and suffered this. As CDC president and CEO. Where Tugade may be getting pins and needles now, Sir Levy got arrows and spears.

“Credit-grabber” he was tagged when Texas Instruments materialized during his watch, the taggers claiming it was his immediate predecessor Tony Ng, “along with a high-profile team composed of Trade Secretary Peter Favila, SCADC Secretary Ed Pamintuan, CIAC’s Chichos Luciano, CDC Chair Roy Navarro, PEZA’s Lilia de Lima and Energy Secretary Raphael Lottila,” that brought the blue chip company to Clark.

Aetas

In his desire to uplift the state of the indigenous people in the Clark area, it was Sir Levy that effected the Joint Memorandum Agreement between the CDC and the Aeta tribal chiefs mandating the state-owned firm’s virtual “control” over undertakings in the Aetas’ ancestral domain.

Instant was then 1^st District Rep. Tarzan Lazatin’s opposition to the JMA, accusing the CDC of deceiving the Aetas into signing the JMA by giving out about a dozen Mitsubishi L300 FB vans to tribal leaders which subsequently became the source of enmity within the tribes as the chiefs took them to be their personal possession.

“Good only at selling cars.” So Cong Tarzan called Sir Levy referencing to the said vans which CDC took pains in proving they did not come from the Laus’ Car-World showroom. 

More telling, Cong Tarzan declared: “The sharing of 80 percent to the CDC and 20 percent to the Aetas on the lease of some 10,000 hectares as mandated by the JMA is most unfair, if not iniquitous. It should be the other way around, the Aetas being the owner of the land and the CDC merely a broker.” And promptly took the issue to the House.

Just a few months back, the JMA came to haunt Tugade himself when it surfaced in the CDC row with Aeta leaders over the sewerage facility project planned along the Sacobia River.    

Aside from assailing Sir Levy for “making Aetas squatters in their own land,” Cong Tarzan also accused him of “reversed racism” on the bidding for the True North project, reportedly awarded to a Korean firm to the prejudice of some other Filipino bidders and one other claimant.
Indeed, as the Punto! story related, during his time as CDC president, Sir Levy  coined the statement “the future of Clark is so bright that we need to wear shades.” Which instantly earned public ridicule when it was appended to a formal photograph of Sir Levy with the Board, vice presidents and managers of the CDC wearing sunglasses inside the heavily draped cavernous OTS Building. “CDC gone blind,” so it was tagged.   

‘Car Bonanza Display’

Arguably, the worst misery inflicted upon Sir Levy in the whole of his CDC presidency came with his flagship project that was the Makati-inspired central business district (CBD) planned to locate at the periphery of the civil aviation area. “A most stupid idea,” so it was called, for “locating Makati right at an airport.”    

Again, it was Cong Tarzan along with the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement that led the opposition to the CBD, mocked as “car bonanza display” to connect it to the Laus’ business of auto dealership.   

The unkindest cut on the CBD issue though came from neither Cong Tarzan nor the PGKM. It was delivered by Sir Levy’s patron herself, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“GMA thumbs down CBD” screamed the banner of Pampanga News. The insult added to the injury unlost, aye, blatantly manifest, given the paper being owned by Sir Levy himself. Unsurprisingly, indeed, expectedly, Pampanga News ceased publication shortly thereafter.

Some ominous warnings for Punto! there? No, Sir Levy does not own this paper. It’s just a thought, silly.

Back to the current story: Laus commended CDC for the sustained progress in Clark.
“We see how Clark is progressing, we see how Clark is developing and many things have stabilized inside the Clark Freeport,” Laus said.

No surprise in the laudations here. Astute as always, Ashley Manabat said Sir Levy “has not only all the reasons, but the obligation” to aggrandize Tugade and the CDC.

One. He is a now a locator at Clark.

Two. He used to be CDC president.

Three. He shares the same Bedan stock, if not streak, with Tugade.

Need we still explain?

Oh, lest we forget: Ashley was editor of Pampanga News at the time of its demise.   

Yeah, no explanations needed. Throw the critics and this newspaper at CDC altogether.