More than hot air

SAD, SAD news in November. Not really to me, but to tens of thousand others. The 18^th Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Festival at the Clark Freeport Zona slated in February 2014 had been cancelled.

In a press statement, the Clark Development Corp. said the event was cancelled “because of lack of preparations.” (Ir)rationalized thus: “(Organizer Capt. Joy Roa) has set a standard and he wants to surpass the success of the 2013 hot air balloon festival.” And concluded: “The event will resume in 2015 with more well-prepared activities.”

Good news in December. Likewise, not really to me but to tens of thousand others.

The Department of Tourism will “spearhead” the new “Philippine Friendship Balloon Festival” set April 10-13, 2014 at the Clark Freeport Zone with Secretary Ramon Jimenez himself at the helm and organized by the Philippine Exhibits and Themeparks Corp.

Themed “It’s more than just hot air. It’s a celebration of life in times of adversity,” the event incorporates some social responsibility with its proceeds going to the rehabilitation of areas devastated by Yolanda.

More than hot air. It resonates with what we’ve been ranting in this corner for the past three or four years.

Banish this freeloading hot air from Clark. So we wrote here in October 2009 yet. This character that goes by the moniker Roa should even be declared persona non grata in the Metro Clark area.

The Clark Development Corp. regularly doled out millions of pesos to Roa – P3.5-M yearly since 2009 – as subsidy to the hot air balloon fest. Public money that was never subjected to liquidation or auditing processes.

Gate receipts, parking fees, stall rentals, etcetera also went to Roa’s Hot Air Balloon Club of the Philippines Inc. (later morphing to the Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Foundation Inc.)  Again, auditing in absentia.

Consider that in 2009, per CDC unofficial, and therefore hidden, report, 49,638 tickets worth at least P100 per ticket were sold, and 5,735 vehicles parked in the designated P50-for-cars, P100-for-buses parking areas during the four-day period. Truly, immense cash crop there already reaped by Roa. And we did not even count the stall areas, going at an average of P17,000 per, and the even pricier corporate sponsorships!

The CDC really treated Roa like royalty. We wrote then, and we rewrite now. Or, it has conferred upon him the first ever most-preferred-locator-at-large at the Clark Freeport. Pray the CDC has come to its senses, finally. And rid itself of this fetid, hot air Roa.   

And now DOT coming to the rescue of the hot air balloon fest.

“Ayaw nating masira ang tradisyon…ang legacy,” said DOT Regional Director Ronnie Tiotuico. No, my seminary elder Don Ronaldo has the least of Roa in mind there.

Truth be told, it was the DOT – then Secretary Mina Gabor and then-as-now

Director Tiotuico – along with Korean businessman and hot-air balloon pilot Sung

Kee Paik, British Airways GM John Emery, and German Max Motschmann that

started the Clark hot air balloon festival in 1994. With the express objective of

priming Clark as engine of economic development in the immediate post-

Pinatubo times and develop hot air ballooning as an aviation sport in the

country.

It was in 1996 that the event was turned over to Roa “pursuant to privatization,”

the operative word of the time. With the proviso that government will cease

funding the event.

So much cash – public funds included – has flowed Roa’s way since. At a clear

disadvantage to the government.

Yeah, high time for the goose that lays the golden egg to come to roost back to

the DOT where it truly belongs.

At the beginning of this piece, I wrote I was not saddened by the earlier reported

demise of the hot air balloon fest. Nor gladdened by succeeding reports of its

revival.    

I do not mean to rain on the parade of hot air balloon enthusiasts but I don’t see

the festival having anything to do with the advancement of the true intent of the

freeport and the Clark International Airport.

Articulated in January 2010 here is my long standing position on the matter, thus:

“Verily, the hot air balloon festival is a direct indictment of the failure of the CDC and the Clark International Airport Corp. to launch the Clark Freeport and the Clark International Airport to their proper niches, as capital- and labor-intensive, export-oriented investment zone for the former; as premier international airport for the latter.

So, where in the world can you find an economic zone and an international airport hosting a hot air balloon festival? Onli in da Pilipins, as the urban idiot is wont to say.

A stand subsequently validated by CIAC President-CEO Victor Jose Luciano himself thus: “This year, 2011, the CIAC has not joined the Hot Air Balloon (Festival). We believe that the project is not in focus with the priorities of CIAC which are to accelerate the development of the airport and woo more airlines to fly to Clark.

For 2010, when CIAC became a partner in the project, through my own efforts, singlehandedly I raised P5.5 million from sponsors which very well covered the P3.5 million payment to Joy Roa.” 

The hot air balloon festival is inimical to the full development of the Clark  International Airport.

Nowhere in the world can you find an airport, an international one at that, as hot air ballooning site. What airline will dare share air space with hot air balloons? If even the lowly pipit can pose grave danger to aircraft, how much more those big balloons?

Safe to say here that balloons are a negation to the prospects of commercial aviation.

My stand…well, stands. 

THE HOT AIR BALLOON FESTIVAL

in past Zona Libre columns 

No hot air at DMIA

“THIS YEAR, 2011, the CIAC has not joined the Hot Air Balloon (Festival). We believe that the project is not in focus with the priorities of CIAC which are to accelerate the development of the airport and woo more airlines to fly to Clark.

For 2010, when CIAC became a partner in the project, through my own efforts, singlehandedly I raised P5.5 million from sponsors which very well covered the P3.5 million payment to Joy Roa.” 

Quick was the text response of Clark International Airport Corp. President-CEO Victor Jose I. Luciano to our column Ballooned fetid air here Monday.

We sense here full vindication of our stand that the hot air balloon festival is inimical to the full development of the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport.

Nowhere in the world can you find an airport, an international one at that, as hot air ballooning site. What airline would dare share air space with hot air balloons? If even the lowly pipit  could pose danger to aircraft, how much more those big balloons?

Safe to say here that balloons are a negation to the prospects of aviation.  

As I wrote here last year too in response to the Clark Development Corp.’s trumpeting “Hot Air Fest Highlights Clark Role in Tourism”: “Verily, the hot air balloon festival is a direct indictment of the failure of the CDC and the Clark International Airport Corp. to launch the Clark Freeport and the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport to their proper niches, as capital- and labor-intensive, export-oriented investment zone for the former; as premier international airport for the latter.

So, where in the world can you find an economic zone and an international airport hosting a hot air balloon festival? Onli in da Pilipins, as the urban idiot is wont to say.

On second thought though, the CDC is right: Hot Air Fest Highlights Clark Role in Tourism. The Freeport and the DMIA be damned.

Ustu ya pero e makatud, as an old Kapampangan adage holds.” 

Fully appreciated is Chichos’ feedback. This assuming greater significance with a contemporaneous CIAC press release of the Manny V. Pangilinan seriously eyeing DMIA development.

“During our discussion, MVP expressed support for the development of DMIA, particularly the establishment of a world-class railway system that would link DMIA to Metro Manila,” said Luciano after what could be considered an “exploratory lunch” he had with the business mogul last  January 3 at a Clark Freeport restaurant.

Chichos added that Pangilinan – who traces his roots to the town of Apalit, if you did not know yet – “is fully supportive of the development of the DMIA to be the country’s premier international gateway. This is a welcome development for the airport that will benefit not only the Clark Freeport and its contiguous regions but the rest of the country.”

Sometime last year, Pangilinan’s Metro Pacific Investment Corp. (MPIC) was reported to have made its intention to bid for the DMIA Terminal 2 project in the wake of the controversial scrapping of the Kuwaiti Al Kharafi (mis)deal. Industry sources said then that the MPIC was even entering into a joint venture with the San Miguel Beer Corp. for the Clark airport project which will have as corollary the construction of a railway system that will run in the middle of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEx) which is run by a Pangilinan company.

Now, these are the developments we like to see at Clark, not the balloons inflated with noxious gasses out of CDC’s asses. (January 12, 2011)

   

*  *  *  *

ALL SMILES. A photo release from the Clark Development Corp. showed a beaming CDC Executive Vice President Philip JB Panlilio and an equally jubilant Joi Roa of the Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta (PIHABF) Foundation, Inc. shaking hands “before exchanging the Memorandum of Agreements they have signed for the staging of the 16th PIHABF inside the Clark Freeport. Also full smiles in the photo were (CDC Assistant Vice President Bernardo Angeles and Chic Talde. Déjà vu. But for a change of some faces, the photo could have been a rehash of what the CDC churned out for the same event in November of 2009. Yeah, it is that same hot ballooning fest again that always leaves foul air in its wake. So it is time again to raise same old issues which the CDC and its hot airing cohort have failed to address. Hence, this reprint of our November 30, 2009 piece here:

Ballooned fetid air

PICTURE PERFECT.

That is that photograph in the local papers of the smiling triumvirate of  Clark International Airport Corporation President and CEO Victor Jose Luciano, Clark Development Corporation President and CEO Benigno Ricafort, and Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Foundation Inc.  President Capt. Joy Roa joining hands – as the caption said – for the 15^th Hot Air Balloon Fiesta slated in February next year.

Beaming their approval were CDC Executive Vice-President Philip Panlilio and CIAC Executive Vice-President and COO Alexander Cauguiran.

So the photo caption informed us that a memorandum of agreement has been signed by the three parties for the annual ballooning event at Clark.

So what is in that memo of agreement, we would like to know. Not so much to satisfy our lust for information as for the need for transparency where transactions involving Roa’s hot airs in Clark are concerned.   

Not too long ago, this paper came out with the news story ‘Hot Air Balloon fest organizer treats Clark people like dirt’ that so raged me to cry in a column: “Banish this freeloading hot air from Clark. This character that goes by the moniker Roa should even be declared persona non grata in the Metro Clark area.”

Why the violent reaction? Here’s what I wrote under the head Balloon burst:

The Hot Air Baloon Festival was held last February yet, and its organizer, notably this one Roa, has yet to submit financial statements to the Clark Development Corp.

So why should he do so? Because the CDC doled out P3.5 million for the balloon festival to, as provided for in a memorandum of agreement, “help finance the design services and production costs of promotions and for all media launch which will be held separately in Manila and Clark Freeport for the said project.”

There was no media launch at the Clark Freeport, in so far as the local media are concerned. The Pampanga mediamen were even barred from covering the event unless they paid P100 as entrance fee.

The organizing Hot Air Balloon Club of the Philippines inc. (HABCPI) of Roa reported that 5,731 complimentary tickets were given out. Not one local mediaman received any.

Yeah, the HABCPI may have been treating Clark people like dirt. But they certainly treated the local media like muck.

So did the CDC get its money’s worth in the balloon fest?

I was there the second day of the event, and the only name I heard blared from the loudspeakers was Roa! Roa! Roa!

So what promotion did Clark get? Other than being the site of the annual Hot Air Balloon festival, what lasting impression of Clark did the crowd take home with them?

The CDC has got to think of its priorities in promoting the Freeport, if only in the cost-effectiveness aspect and the image it wanted to project. 

Sir BNR – that’s CDC President-CEO Benny N. Ricafort for you – the last time I summoned the spirit of RA 7227, Clark is still supposed to be locus for labor-intensive, investment-driven, export-oriented haven. Not hot air balloon site.

That P3.5 million promotional fee given to HABCPI is one fetid-aired balloon that burst in the face of the CDC. A costly indulgence of Roa’s fancy. And that was only for 2009. Think how much the CDC had granted to Roa through the years the balloon fest ran at Clark.

Think now how many road shows or investment missions P3.5 million could have funded. And getting much better returns for Clark.

It is incumbent upon the CDC to make this Roa and his group account for that P3.5 million they got. Along with however much they had taken from the CDC in all the years that they held the balloon fest. For Allah’s sake, that’s government money – and therefore subject to liquidation and auditing procedures. Otherwise, the CDC is inviting itself to the Ombudsman’s lair.

Then, there is too the need for a proper accounting of gate receipts, parking fees, stall rentals, etcetera that, someone at the CDC whispered, all got into Roa’s pockets – allegedly. That’s immense cash crop there.
In this year’s edition of the balloon fest, our CDC mole reported that at least 49,638 tickets were sold and 5,735 vehicles parked in the designated pay-parking area during the four-day period. Yeah, immense cash crop there.

And no financial statements required of Roa for all this?

The CDC is treating this Roa like royalty. Or, the CDC has conferred upon him the first ever most-preferred-locator-at-large at the Freeport. 

Makes me want to pass gas.

Yes, and now even the CIAC joined the CDC in paying obeisance to this Roa. That means more subsidy in government money to indulge Roa’s fancy. No need to liquidate too.

Yeah, really makes me want to fart right to the very noses of these Clark bosses. (January 2012)