Grounded

WHAT WAS promised as a lasting legacy of the Macapagal-Arroyo presidency has been delivered as a monumental failure.
The Terminal 2 project at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport, projected to be finished by the time President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo steps down on June 30, 2010has yet to find a winning bidder.
What has been hailed as one fulfillment by the dutiful daughter of the caduang apag (second serving) promise to the Kapampangan of the Macapagal father has proved half-cooked.
The Terminal 1 project at the DMIA projected to be inaugurated by the President on her last birthday as President – April 5, 2010 – is only 60 percent complete, way past her deadline of completion that was after 90 calendar days from its commencement on December 15, 2009.
So what gives with these monumental failures to launch the DMIA to world class status?
In the case of T-2, the all-or-nothing fixity of the Clark International Airport Corp. Chairman Nestor Mangio on the Kuwaiti firm Al-Mal/Kharafi not only to develop the new terminal but take the whole civil aviation complex so bogged down all other bidding considerations resulting to a two-year stalemate. That ended finally with the President herself ordering the Kuwaiti firm be stricken off the list of T-2 prospects.
And for Mangio’s obstinate insistence on the Kuwaiti proposal – despite the opposition of the Office of Government Corporate Counsel and the CIAC Board for its apparent betrayal of national sovereignty – has apparently paid off with its past-midnight appointment as chair of the Subic-Clark Alliance for Development. But that is another controversy.
On the Terminal 1 expansion project, no less than one of the sub-contractors has termed it as “an example of a successful failure.”
As in T-2, a problem of contractors obtain with T-1, AG Araja for the latter.
“There are proofs showing that the CIAC makes on-time payments to AG Araja. But it does not do its share with the sub-contractors.” So was the sub-contractor quoted by this paper’s Joey Pavia in his story Monday.
It was this failure of T-1’s principal contractor to pay the sub-contractors that caused the project to lag way past its targeted date of completion.
Another sub-contractor I talked to deplored AG Araja’s “total indifference – walang malasakit – to the Kapampangans, be it with the terminal or with the sub-contractors.”
An observation affirmed by the other sub-contractor thus: “Why did CIAC have to give it to a contractor from Laguna when there is an extravagance of equally if not more competent contractors in Pampanga…A Kapampangan contractor would make sure of completing the project on time, knowing that it is a legacy of the Kapampangan president for her people. His pride and honor would ensure that work will be best, if not fast...King caduang apag na la mu talaga ding Kapampangan (Are the people from Pampanga just good for second serving?)”
As in T-2, so in T-1: the very stewards of CIAC at odds with one another in their perception of how things should work.
Mangio is said to have wanted the contract with AG Araja terminated in the wake of its failure to complete the T-1 project on time and go about its completion “by administration.”
CIAC President and CEO Victor Jose Luciano reportedly favoring an extension for AG Araja until such time T-1 is completed, thereby earning the ire of the sub-contractors who promptly labeled him “coddler.”
In the meanwhile, the DMIA is fast becoming what the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement chair, Ruperto Cruz, called it to be: Dead Macapagal International Airport.
Yeah, the flagship project of the President at half-mast signifying its death, as the sub-contractor witticised.