IT ALL started with that Tubong Lugaw piece here last April, and then The State of the Clark Freeport, for real last month, interspersed with the reportage of human trafficking in the freeport and the CDC workers’ unrest over the deprivation of their benefits, finally blowing out with the news in Punto! online yesterday of investors either stopping or relocating their expansion projects elsewhere.
Punto! is back to its “storied bias” against the Clark Development Corp., so it came within my earshot. Of course, not. Proof positive? This piece published here on March 13, 2019.
Men of Clark
MORE ADVERSARIAL than cordial has been this paper’s relationship with the head honchos of Clark since it – Punto! – came to being in 2007. Even much longer was the animosity that permeated the social intercourse between this corner and Clark’s top brass – dating back to the very first Clark Development Corp. president that was Tito Henson.
Still, our doubting stance has never in any way beclouded our journalistic objectivity where the Freeport and its leaders proved even if only par for the course. When they excelled, we rain tinsels on their parade.
Proof positive of this is the dominance of Clark’s personages, corporate locators included, in our annual choice for Man of the Year.
The top locators of the Clark Freeport –
- SM MALLS
THE SHORTEST distance between rural rusticity and cosmopolitan sophistication is an SM City mall.
No more is this truer than in the coming of the Philippines’ premier mall to Central Luzon, instantly turning the landscape from rural to urban, promptly transforming the shopping, dressing, eating, leisuring habits of the people. Setting a new lifestyle aptly captured in the catch phrase: “Mag-SM tayo!” translating to “The SM mall is all.”
The pre-eminence of SM City malls in this once rice granary of the country upped and maxxed some more in 2012 with the opening of SM City Olongapo in February and SM City San Fernando Downtown in July, bringing to – count them: SM City Marilao and SM City Baliwag in Bulacan; SM City Pampanga and SM City Clark in the regional center; and SM City Tarlac – seven Henry Sy’s malls in this region, the greatest concentration outside Metro Manila.
Unarguably, SM Prime Holdings – with all its mainstay shops and tenants in its malls – is the single biggest job provider in the whole of Central Luzon…
- CEBU PACIFIC AIR
ADRIFT IN the doldrums was the Clark Freeport for much of 2012, the impermanence at the helm of the Clark Development Corp., arguably, taking its toll on prospective investments.
Performing CDC president-CEO Antonio Remollo was replaced in April by former AFP Chief of Staff Eduardo Oban Jr. albeit in an OIC capacity, and was in turn replaced in mid-December by businessman-lawyer Arthur Tugade. Like the banana republics of yore, the constant changing in the CDC leadership gives the wrong signals to investors, to say the least.
Providing the only redeeming value to the Clark Freeport in 2012 was – is – Cebu Pacific Air, the Philippines’ largest national flag carrier.
On Dec. 4, CebPac opened its Philippine Academy for Aviation Training (PAAT), a P1.8-billion joint venture with CAE (NYSE: CAE; TSX: CAE), world leader in aviation training. Aptly capping 2012 with the greatest promise of a bullish 2013 for the Clark Freeport, as well as the Clark International Airport…
- DENNIS ANTHONY UY
NOT SO much with the Joneses but with Gates and Jobs that he has kept up – the extraordinary individuals, as well as the generic meaning to their names. As in information gatekeeper. As in job generator.
This is Dennis Anthony Uy, the self-made man ever at the forefront of the march to modernity, starting as trader in Betamax and VHS tapes back in the early ‘80s, now in the cutting edge of the information and communication technology that will soon connect the Philippines to the world…
- DAESIK HAN
TURNING A $4-million investment into a $90-million hotel-casino-convention complex in a period of 10 years is no mean feat.
Raising the ante to $190 million by next year is nothing short of spectacular.
Widus International Leisure Inc. is – unarguably – the Clark Freeport Zone’s longest running success story starting out a dream of Deasik Han, its president-CEO…
- IRINEO “BONG” ALVARO, Phd
NO PERSONAGE in contemporary politics and business hereabouts has invested as much personal stake in Clark as Dr. Irineo “Bong” Alvaro.
In Clark’s American past, Alvaro was a young working student soon catapulted to
the top leadership of the Filipino Civilian Employees Association that championed
the cause of labor rights and won for the local hires working conditions, salaries
and benefits that their off-base counterparts, aye, Philippine labor itself, could
only dream of.
In Clark’s freeport present, Alvaro is a blue-chip investor, upping the ante in the
hotel and gaming industry, priming Clark as premier destination area of what he
called the three Rs – rest, recreation and recuperation…
From the Clark International Airport Corp. –
- VICTOR JOSE LUCIANO
IT WAS a no-nonsense job tailor-fit for our Man of the Year.
Thrice offered by no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the top plum of the then fledgling Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) is one our Man of the Year could not refuse. Not in Puzo’s Godfather sense of the phrase though, but for the sheer challenge – of blazing a trail, and the impact – to national development – it posed.
Thus, it was that the fellow from Magalang, Pampanga who has made a name for himself in the national scene, retraced his steps back home to serve not just his fellow Kapampangans, but the rest of the people of Central and Northern Luzon and help them – and the nation – find their niche in the international arena of development…
2018. ALEXANDER S. CAUGUIRAN
AS 2017 turned out, the unfolding story of the Clark International Airport may well be timelined B.C. and C.E. Not of the Christ-centric old and the all-too secular new dating systems though. But one oriented in Alexander Sangalang Cauguiran, president-CEO of the Clark International Airport Corp.
Simply put, Before Cauguiran – for well over a decade – the Clark airport was at best a long-held promise epically failing short at every try of delivery….
Flights were a matter of coming and going, and going, going, unreturning. Destinations, both domestic and international opened, and just as quickly closed.
By the end of 2017 – the first full 16 months of the Cauguiran Era – Clark had recorded 103 percent increase in aircraft movement at 12,620 and 59 percent rise in passenger traffic at 1,514,531 passengers, surpassing the previous highest figure of 1,315,757 recorded in 2012…
From the Clark Development Corp. –
- ATTY. ARTHUR P. TUGADE
COMPETENT. DARING. Caring. Beyond sheer sloganeering, Atty. Arthur P. Tugade redefined the Clark Development Corp. by living up to that corollary meaning, therefrom the Clark Freeport Zone highly profiting.
“We want to make Clark a logistics hub but this cannot be done without a business environment and a habitable society,” Tugade told Punto in April 2013, some four months into his term as CDC president- CEO, in his first ever interview with media.
“So, basically what’s the direction? Set the predicate for business here and once it is there you can pursue the logistics hub and effect a habitable community. The trust gained, the total persona of the businessman – pleasure, education, leisure and enjoyment – attained.” The road map set there…
And, finally, from the Bases Conversion and Development Authority –
- VIVENCIO “VINCE” DIZON
IF ONLY for the New Clark City – that which, in its various incarnations throughout the BCDA existence remained still-born – coming, at last, to its full realization…
OF PUNTO’S 13 Man of the Year awardees, nine are Clark-connected. The remaining four – Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio, 2008; Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez, 2010; Gov. Lilia G. Pineda, 2011; and Mayor Edgardo D. Pamintuan are in local governance. (Three others have since joined them – Gov. Dennis “Delta” Pineda (2021), Angeles City Mayor Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin (2022), and Mabalacat City Mayor Crisostomo Garbo (2023))
Come to think of it, this is the least being adversarial to Clark. Punto! is, in all actuality, strongly biased for it.
