Clark conspiracy

WISH YOU may, wish you might, but you won’t have the wish you have for Clark.

So spake a CIA – civilian in Angeles – of the CIA – the Clark International Airport. Some cloak-and-dagger credential did indeed obtain in the CIA, having worked in and retired from naval intelligence. So indulging in his take of the CIA – the airport, is no waste of intelligence or time.

The CIA as the premier international gateway of the Philippines will never fly. So he says, with the conviction of Thomas having touched the pierced side of the Risen Christ.

How so?

America will not allow it. Else it would be deprived of its best military training facility. You think good old USA will just let go of its investment in the space shuttle-ready runway at Clark, of the incomparable Crow Valley for bombing and strafing runs of its warbirds? Nothing comes close to Clark for the American eagle to sharpen its talons, so to speak.

And, as it was then so it is moreso now with Chinese belligerence in the Scarborough, er, Panatag Shoal, America’s wish is the Philippine government’s command.

Opening copy of Punto:  Your editorial last Wednesday said it all, if I may: “For the Philippines to be minimally relied upon as a US regional partner... it therefore behooves us to resort to all possible means to build at the very least a most minimal credible defense posture.”
So appealed Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario del Rosario before his American counterpart in Washington recently.
“We are submitting a list of hardware that the US can help us out with. This would be in terms of patrol vessels, patrol aircraft, radar systems, coast watch stations,” del Rosario furthered.
The Philippines’ wish list included “up to four squadrons (48) of upgraded Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets, more well-armed frigates and corvette-size, fast to surface combatant vessels and minesweepers and four to six mini submarines, possibly obtained from Russia.” This according to the Center for a New American Security.
Del Rosario pointed out that while awaiting the new hardware, it is important for the Philippines and the United States to continue to conduct military exercises “in a better way, in more locations, in a more frequent manner.”
VFA all the way! The comeback of the US military bases can’t be far away.”

Actually, there’s no need for the US to re-base its forces here. Notwithstanding the closure of its base in Okinawa. All that matters – in the American interest – is   unrestricted access to Clark. Thus, the imperative that it should remain at most a limited-service airport, as it is now, with a few domestic flights and some budget carriers. 

As told by a spook, the “real plot” of the CIA story – the ex-operative’s and the airport’s – can never get any spookier than that.

In all appearances there indeed is some sabotage going on at the CIA, to prevent it from being the international gateway it is destined to be.

The idiotic scheme of only-two-slots open at the immigration counter no matter the volume of passengers at the CIA terminal can only be designed as to make anyone damn the airport to kingdom come, and never, ever, to set foot upon it again.

And as though the resultant delays of flights from that immigration retardation were not enough to dissuade other airlines to come to Clark, there is the “terminal illness” afflicting the CIA.

But the cube that served the US Air Force well in its incarnation as the MAC Terminal of the US Air Force is now and anachronism to commercial air travel, no matter its refurbishing and renaming to Diosdado Macapagal.

Since 2006, the Clark International Airport Corp. has bandied different entities it said were serious – read: moneyed – to develop the CIA, starting with the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. in partnership with the Manila International Airport Authority and the Bureau of Immigration pitching in P3 billion for the project.

Then came for the longest time ALMAL, a subsidiary of the Kuwait mega-developer M.A. Kharafi, reportedly proffering $1.2 billion.

Thereafter followed Malaysia’s Bristeel Overseas Ventures Inc. with a reported offer of $150 million to undertake the immediate expansion of the CIA terminal.

Filipino firm Philco Aero, and a Korean consortium which name I cannot now recall were also announced by CIAC.

The last I heard of the bidders for the CIA was the Metro Pacific Group of mogul Manny V. Pangilinan which had as component to airport development the establishment of a frail system using the median or center of the North Luzon Expressway which Pangilinan also operates.   

After all is said of these million-billion dollar proposals, nothing, absolutely nada, is done at the terminal. Which really gives cause to the conspiracy theory believed to be strangling the CIA.

That, compounded further by reports of the government keen on the development of Poro Point in San Fernando, La Union as “world class international gateway.”

In the words of Bases Conversion and Development Authority chair Felicito Payumo: “Something similar to Changi Airport in Singapore which is a combination of a commercial shopping mall and an international airport.”

Changi for Poro Point. Tsugi for Clark.

Enough to make anyone a conspiracy theorist.