Marred Clark

"WHY CLARK? Clark is 2,000 hectares while NAIA is 440 hectares. It's not much rocket science to figure out."

So spake administration candidate Mar Roxas before the Makati Business Club and the Management Association of the Philippines, as bannered by Sun-Star Pampanga last week.  

"What's the difference? NAIA, 440 hectares only. Intersecting runways- 0624, that's the long runway and then the one heading to Baclaran is called 1331. So if you're using one, you cannot use the other. There is a limitation to what NAIA can produce," Roxas qualified, if only to stress that NAIA is already constricted by its configuration, whereas, Clark can well contain three parallel runways. (Yo, Mar, that’s what the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement has been saying for the longest time now, or since that group took the cudgel for Clark airport development in the immediate aftermath of the Pinatubo eruptions.)

“We are 100 million people. We are a country that is looked up as the Bright Star in Asia. So, we need to step up as well," furthered he, hence the imperative of the Clark airport development. (Duh, no brainer there.)

And an integral high-speed rail system: “We need to do that because there is no new airport without [it].” (Duh, duh.)

Instant was the laudation that went Roxas’ way, primarily from his supporters in the business sector in Pampanga, exceptionally from 1^st District Rep. Yeng Guiao.

"I know he means business," said the Coach, “"because he has repeatedly given that position in my private conversations with him and in his public engagements where the issue of Clark is raised."

Enough, to Guiao, for the people of Pampanga and Central Luzon to go all out for Roxas as “[h]e truly deserves our votes because his plans for Clark hew perfectly with our plans for the future in terms of making our province and region more progressive, highly developed and totally beneficial to our people.”

We can all forgive Guiao for his yellowed loyalty to his party’s standard bearer. But we cannot believe what he is saying of Roxas: that he means business when it comes to the development of the Clark airport.

Let me remind Guiao of our record of Roxas vis-à-vis the Clark airport in some excerpts from our commentaries here.

“Nattering nabob of negativism.”

Fittingly suiting Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas for his seemingly obsessive compulsion – or should it be compulsive obsession? – to stomp on Pampanga at every jig he takes.

Blinder than a bat on anything good about Pampanga. Eyed as a fly on the minutest bad. Roxas is.

Where others – the Japan International Cooperation Agency and US Agency for International Aid included, the mogul Manny V. Pangilinan too – see the Clark International Airport as best option for the country’s premier international gateway, Roxas saw the least possibility, short-sightedly looking only at the long distance between Metro Manila and Clark, and the prohibitive cost of building a railway system to span it.

There, totally blinded to the fact that distance is best measured not in miles but in travel time. A case in point: It takes 45 minutes to motor from Balintawak, Quezon City to Clark spanning over 70 kilometers. It takes some two hours by car from Balintawak to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport only some 20 kilometers away.

As then head of the Department of Transportation and Communications, Roxas was all bullish about the development of other airports in the country, some serviced only by missionary flights. And, all bullshit about Clark, over which he sat as chairman of the board of Clark International Airport Corp. Come now, give but one good thing that went Clark airport’s way during the incumbency of Roxas at CIAC! (Roxas the Absurd, Punto-Nov. 27, 2012).

Then, on the Clark International Airport ranking 3^rd in the "World's Best Airport Freezone" list of fDi Magazine contained in its "Global Free Zones of the Future 2012/13," we wrote in part:

If any, the only consolation we can get out of this…citation is the public acknowledgment coming from Malacanang that government is working to improve the airport’s facilities.

"We welcome the assessment made by the London Financial Times Group. Certainly, we are in the process of improving our airport facilities... That has been the commitment made by Transportation and Communications Secretary Mar Roxas to the President and, therefore, the said agency will exert all its best efforts to improve the facilities of not only Clark but also the other airports." So Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said.

On second thought, no consolation with Roxas mentioned there.

So what is Roxas concretely showing at the Clark International Airport for that “commitment made to the President”?

So sorry to sound grouchy, but with Roxas, there simply is no way for the Clark International Airport to ever become what it is destined to be – the Philippines’ premier international gateway.

Why, for over a year now as chairman of the board of CIAC, has Roxas even attended just one board meeting?

That just shows how (un)committed this loser is when it comes to anything Clark.

As anything and everything good at the Clark International Airport happen despite Roxas, so anything and everything bad happen because of Roxas. (Best airport, aww c’mon!, Punto-August 14, 2012)

Reconstructing Roxas as the champion of Clark airport development goes against the very grain of our recorded chronicles.

Here in the Metro Clark area, Roxas is demonized as having ordained the non-development of the Clark International Airport at the time he was Transportation and Communications secretary.

Through his machinations, so it is alleged – and believed – the Clark International Airport Corp. was snatched by DOTC from the Bases Conversion Development Authority. Plans in the pipeline for the CIA terminal and its peripherals were thereby put in the backburner. 

Roxas distinguished himself as chair of the CIAC Board for being personally absent in all the board meetings during his incumbency.

Even with current DOTC Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya presiding over the slow demise of the CIA, Roxas has not escaped blame, being Abaya’s karancho, if not his overlord, in the Liberal Party. (Deconstructing Roxas, Punto-July 14, 2014)

All these years, Roxas only marred Clark as premium alternative to NAIA as premier international gateway.

So, since when did he publicly embrace the Clark airport advocacy, to the point of calling his cohort Abaya’s brainchild of Sangley being NAIA’s replacement “a stupid idea”?

Only after he filed his certificate of candidacy for president.

And Guiao wants us to vote for him on that Clark platform?