The news report of the government’s plan to develop a new international airport at the former US naval base in Sangley Point in Cavite raises several questions.
Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya who announced the project last week said the Sangley Point airport, which would replace the old Ninoy Aquino International Airport, is a “game changer” for the local tourism industry.
Located at the northern tip of Cavite province near Manila Bay, Sangley is only 17 kilometers south of Manila and a mere 20-minutes drive away without traffic The site is ideal compared to the three NAIA terminals located near residential areas in Pasay and Paranaque.
Abaya who still has his hands full with his mess at the Metro Rail Transit, said the Sangley airport would be completed in 2025. This, even as he still has to complete the work on NAIA Terminal 3 and the total renovation of NAIA 1.
Obviously, the Sangley project cannot be completed in the last 18 months of the Aquino administration. Fully aware of the decrepit condition of NAIA 1 and the unfinished work on NAIA 3 even before Aquino came to power in 2010, why did Abaya and the DOTC think of Sangley only now?
The Department of Transportation and Communication said it is still waiting for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to complete its feasibility study. There is of course work needed to be done by the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) to build an extended runway in Sangley for today’s bigger commercial jetliners.
The Abaya announcement made no mention of private sector participation in the Sangley airport project. Is the government going to undertake this big ticket infrastructure project without private sector participation? It will be recalled that tycoon Ramon S. Ang when he was still running Philippine Airlines submitted a proposal to build an international airport financed by PAL and a group of investors. So did another taipan William Tieng who offered to build an airport in Sangley bankrolled by a consortium of European investors. I wrote about the Tieng proposal several columns back which is why I was wondering whether the Sangley project Abaya announced is the same proposal Tieng submitted for Aquino’s approval six months ago.
What ever happened to the Ang and Tieng airport proposals?
We hope plans for the Sangley proposals are not awarded to some favored contractors before Aquino exits on June 30, 2016. There is the possibility a shady deal with its usual overprice and kickback mess would be left to the incoming government to deal with.
Reunification
The recent controversy over “The Interview”, and North Korea’s threat to bomb all movie theaters showing the film, has made the on and off reunification talks of North and South Korea even more distant than ever.
The US accused Pyongyang of hacking the website of Sony Film Productions for producing the fictional interview with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his alleged assassination.
Biggest losers in this decades- long political divide since the end of the war in the Korean Peninsula in the fifties are the families separated by the 38th Parallel dividing North and South.
A few years ago there was a thaw in North –South relations when Jong Un’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il allowed a brief visit by the southerners with their northern relatives. It was a tearful and heart-wrenching reunion albeit short. Since then, Pyongyang closed its doors again and the unhinged Kim Jong Un whenever he’s in one of his rant moods would threaten to unleash his missiles on Seoul and Tokyo even as far as the US West Coast.
The US and its Asian allies have gotten used to Jong Un’s mood swings but can never tell when he will really go off the edge and push the button on his warheads.
Bridging the China-Taiwan divide
China and Taiwan held the first ever government-to-government talks in February last year since they broke up 65 years ago. Chiang Kai Shek fled the mainland to Taiwan after losing a bloody civil war to the communists led by Mao Zedong.
The meeting held in eastern China’s city of Nanjing was a milestone in the cross-strait relations between Beijing and Taipei. Although not much was accomplished, the fact that the two sides met at all after decades of acrimonious skirmishing was significant since China had been occasionally threatening to invade Taiwan and retake the renegade province
Mao and Chiang’s demise has not thawed the tumultuous relation between the two countries. Bejing still insists on reunification under communist rule while Taipei, fully supported and armed by the US has managed to keep at bay its giant neighbor across the pond.
Beijing’s policy of full control which triggered massive protests by thousands of Hong Kong residents recently may have given the Taiwanese cold feet at the idea of reunification.