President's stubbornness
keeps NAIA-3 closed

IT'S been more than a year since the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 was completed and ready to start operation. Unfortunately, due to a business dispute between the terminal's contractors and the Macapagal administration, the terminal still stands empty, the more than 450-million-dollar facility left to slowly deteriorate.

What could have been a spanking new terminal to greet all visitors to the Philippines, has instead become a pawn in a petty war of greed between the personal lawyer of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, F. Arthur "Pancho" Villaraza, and the consortium Philippine International Air Terminal Co. (PIATCo) that was given the contract to build and operate Ninoy Aquino International Airport-3, composed of the German airport operator Fraport AG, and its Philippine partner the Cheng family.

According to a series of articles in the opposition newspaper Daily Tribune, then presidential adviser on strategic projects Gloria Tan-Climaco, presidential legal counsel Avelino "Nonong" Cruz and Villaraza allegedly made an extortion attempt early this year against Fraport of 70 million dollars. The newspaper claims that a tape exists of the conversation in which this extortion attempt was allegedly made.

To backtrack a bit: The NAIA-3 contract was awarded the PIATCo consortium during the Ramos administration and amended under the Estrada administration. When President Joseph Estrada was overthrown in January 2001, and with the new Macapagal administration came new cronies who wanted their cut of the action. When the consortium resisted having to pay out what amounts to bribes, the Macapagal administration went to the Supreme Court and got the justices to rule that the NAIA-3 contract was "disadvantageous" to the country. In effect, the court's ruling said that the Philippine government didn't have to pay for the new terminal until the dispute was settled. Fraport has now taken the issue to the World Bank's arbitration body.

President Macapagal has denied the claims of extortion, but has agreed to look into the allegations. She should have negotiated a solution to the NAIA-3 dilemma a long time ago. A mothballed terminal does little to boost the country's image abroad. And if Fraport is successful in its arbitration, the Philippine government could see some of its overseas assets sold off to pay Fraport. In the end though, it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth of foreign investors who will now think twice before investing in the Philippines. A pity really.

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THE ALLEGED brief firefight between police and escaped terrorist Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi last Sunday at a checkpoint near General Santos City, left Al-Ghozi dead and the tongues of cynics wagging. Some military and police sources claim that a firefight never took place, and that Al-Ghozi already was in police custody on Sunday night, and that he was just allowed to run away to be shot down by police bullets.

According to cynics, this was ordered by the administration in order to show-off to the Bush administration that the Philippines was being tough with terrorists. That it happened just days before President George W. Bush's visit to Manila on Saturday, was no mere coincidence.

When Al-Ghozi managed to just walk out from a lockup in Camp Crame a few months ago, I remember thinking that he had been allowed to escape in order to be later hunted down and killed. Better to eliminate a known-criminal than housing and feeding him while incarcerated for years, is a common belief among some law enforcement officials.

For sure, Al-Ghozi was a nasty terrorist who killed many innocent people, and I don't think he'll be missed except perhaps by his own mother. We will never know for sure whether he was executed or really killed in a shoot-out.

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THE HURRIED cleaning up of Manila in advance of President Bush's arrival on Saturday for an eight-hour visit has been criticized by some as an extravagant waste of money.

It was no less than Ilocos Norte Representative Imee Marcos who leaked the precise amount, 10 million pesos, that the Macapagal administration is spending for the clean up and entertainment of Bush and his entourage. Malacañang Palace has been given a lick of new paint, flowers have been planted along roadsides, and billboards erected, ironically enough, to hide slum areas. Sounds like the good old days of the Marcoses to me!

Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chairperson Bayani Fernando earlier this week had vowed not to hide slum areas during the Bush visit, promising to tear down walls that had been erected years ago to do just that. How ironic it is now that he seems to have been overruled, surely by Malacañang, and billboards have gone up to hide the more sorry eyesores.

It is the height of hypocrisy for Imee Marcos to denounce the 10-million-peso price tag of the Bush visit, especially since her own parents spared no expense for many events when they were in power during the 1970s and 80s. In dollar terms, the 181,818 dollars being spent on Bush's visit will be well worth it for the Philippines in terms of the military and economic aid it continues to receive from the US.

An interesting New York Times article on Wednesday pointed out how Bush's visit to Asia was being dubbed the "Al-Qaeda trip from hell" by his security personnel, but that the Philippines was happy to be having him for a full eight hours, compared to Indonesia where Bush will be for a mere three hours.

The article points out that Bush decided against an overnight stay in Manila because of the high possibility of a terrorist attack or a military coup. It contrasts today's security situation to President Bill Clinton's visit to Manila in 1996, when he stayed several nights in the MacArthur Suite at the Manila Hotel.

Of course, what the article fails to mention is that since Clinton's visit in 1996 the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington occurred, and that the US is now more hated around the globe for its retaliatory attacks on Afghanistan and its invasion of Iraq. No wonder Bush doesn't feel safe anywhere in Asia.

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