P2 billion Nayong Pilipino project on pandemic hold

MANILA, Philippines — The plan to build a new Nayong Pilipino park in Parañaque City for P2 billion has been put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic, its executive director revealed recently.

“The P2-billion fund that will help us jumpstart and build the Nayong Pilipino Park in Parañaque has been put on hold to address the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Nayong Pilipino Foundation (NPF) executive director Gertie Duran-Batocabe.

In 2019, the NPF – an attached agency of the Department of Tourism – was given P2 billion by another attached agency, the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority, to build a new park.

It was set in an area of 15 hectares at the Entertainment City but was later suspended, according to NPF deputy executive director Jovertlee Pudan.

The NPF has called on the Marcos administration to provide funding to revive the theme park which the President’s mother, Imelda Marcos, established in 1972 when she was the country’s first lady.

Exhibit

As Nayong Pilipino marks its 50th year, an exhibit titled “(Ka)Loob(an)” is open to the public at Fort Santiago’s IVC Teatro in Intramuros until Nov. 18.

Batocabe said the NPF has been reflecting on how to welcome Nayong Pilipino’s golden anniversary and make it a “noteworthy occasion considering the predicament and the challenges caused by the pandemic.”

“We came up with the idea of an exhibit of our artifacts sitting idle in our office,” she said.

The exhibit features items from the NPF’s “vast collection of 3,000 heritage pieces,” including headdresses, textile, spears and jars from tribes in the Cordilleras, as well as fabric and furniture inspired by Islam from Mindanao.

The items displayed at the exhibit were collected by the NPF recently, with some of them dated 2002, 2008 and 2012.
The exhibit is being staged with the help of the Intramuros Administration, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines, the Local Historical Committees Network, Museo San Agustin, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Duty Free Philippines, and Destileria Limtuaco & Co.

Botacabe hopes visitors of the exhibit would realize that such heritage items “face a new kind of threat, this time not with guns, cannons or bolos but with unprecedented modernity and a generation born into the internet era, a time that is characterized by massive digital societal change.”
The Nayong Pilipino was first established as a private foundation by the former first lady and later converted into a state-owned company during the presidency Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

The park, situated near the then Manila International Airport in Pasay City, offered “experiential learning,” as described by former NPF executive director Apolonio Anota Jr. and featured replicas of tourist sites like the Aguinaldo Mansion, Mayon Volcano, Banaue Rice Terraces and the country’s first mosque outside Mindanao.

It was eventually closed and gave way to the expansion of the current Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
The Nayong Pilipino was then transferred to Clark in Pampanga, near the Clark International Airport.