My belated Christmas wish for GMA

I just read from The Freeman that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) will be in Cebu today for the opening of the Microsoft Southern Philippines office at the IT Park in Asiatown, which used to be the old Lahug airfield until then Senator Sergio Osmeña Jr., father of Mayor Tomas Osmeña, called for the transfer of the domestic operations of the Lahug airport to the unused Mactan Airbase, which was then being used only as a staging point by the US military during the Vietnam War.

The airport operations of Philippine Airlines (PAL), Fast Airways and Air Manila were moved to Mactan, which still didn’t have even a single bridge, prompting many Cebuanos to howl at Serging… simply because no one could see the vision that Serging Osmeña saw way back in the late 50s of what Cebu could become. Today, without the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA), there would have been no tourist boom, therefore there would be no Tambuli Beach Resort, which started the beach resort craze in Mactan; no Shangri-La’s Mactan Island Resort and Spa or Plantation Bay Resort and certainly no Mactan Cebu Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) or the Asiatown IT Park… not even a Bohol tourism boom!

If the critics of Serging then (believe me, they were a lot of them) had their way, Cebu would still be the backwater town that it used to be 30 years ago, discovered by Ferdinand Magellan 486 years earlier, regained by Conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and completely forgotten by Imperial Manila, especially during the reign of the Marcos Dictatorship. If you go to Cebu today, you’d find a totally modern Metro Cebu… complete with its old downtown business district, the beautiful made-by-the-Americans Osmeña Boulevard (formerly Jones Avenue) and now we have that a IT park, Cebu’s little Silicon Valley, that has put Cebu on the global map, ready to compete with the others in a world that according to world columnist and author Thomas Friedman is turning flat.

But while we are happy with the growth of Cebu, however, there are remnants of our old ways that should have been thrown out, replaced or attuned to the present times. A case in point is a headline by The Freeman last Saturday, Dec. 23, where a clerk of court in Naga town died in a road accident in what pundits now call the "highway of death." This was the newly finished Talisay-to-Carcar road built by the Gorones Construction group on a road that was so narrow that vehicles going from either direction looked like they were following a funeral cortege.

Not anymore. This road is now four-lane wide and what is obvious here is that Cebuanos and I can say this for most of the motorists who live south of Metro Manila, just don’t know how to drive fast when the opportunity comes when we see a very wide road. Blame the road or the drivers? Clearly the Philippine government or Congress isn’t up to speed when making traffic laws that would instill proper driving habits and more importantly discipline on our roads so deadly accidents can be reduced.

Let me point out that this is not a Cebu-only problem, but a nationwide problem where motorists learn to drive the mechanical way… meaning they learn to drive a vehicle, how to let it run or make it stop or make it turn. But the more important part of obeying our traffic rules or of simply being courteous to other drivers is totally absent in today’s motorists. Some can say "Onli en d Pilipins" as a joke, but believe me, the joke is really on us! When a drunk driver kills an innocent family having a quiet drive… this is an unforgivable crime! Yet even traffic officers today seem to accept that the driver was drunk as if this was an admissible fact for us. It is time to put a cap on recidivists — strike three and you’re out!

Thus I dare say to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that the time has come for her to crack the proverbial whip and take the bull by the horns and adopt what the other nations have done to their own motorists in order for them to drive safely and not endanger other drivers along the road. This is my belated Christmas wish, together with the elections for delegates to the constitutional convention (con-con). Of course, we expect more monkey wrenches thrown along the way.

As for Cha-cha, GMA must act like a true visionary to change our Charter with a better one. Indeed, today we have very few visionaries and a virtual army of nitpicking critics who can’t find anything good in this country. But history will be the judge that what we do today would change this nation for the better and I’m betting that it would make us a better nation.

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Finally, I read the news that Metro Pacific apparently had sold its 84 percent share (2.531 billion shares or 83.7 percent of Nenaco’s capital stock) of the very financially troubled Negros Navigation Corp. (Nenaco) for a mere P5 million to the Negros Holdings and Management Corp. last Dec. 20. So the question is, who are the folks behind this Negros Holding and Management Corp.?

Apparently, in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Nenaco Holdings is a newly incorporated holding company owned by the members of Nenaco’s present management, led by its chairman, Sulfico Tagud Jr. Hmmm, I’m sorry if I’m still a skeptic when it comes to any business move by Metro Pacific, especially when it comes to Nenaco. Thanks to their total lack of transparency and worse, a strategy of deception when they reported making a profit and then a few months later, the real truth surfaced that they still came up with a huge loss. Why did their managers go to all the trouble of lying to the public? I really don’t know.

I would like to believe that this new strategy for Nenaco is a kind of graceful exit from its parent company, which for so long believed that Nenaco could be rehabilitated. Perhaps, US President George W. Bush could learn from the top management of Metro Pacific who could advise him on an exit strategy for Iraq, while at the same time, not lose face in the eyes of the public.

Meanwhile, even with this new management scheme, I understand that Metro Pacific would still remain as Nenaco’s major creditor with P119 million in receivables and another P211 million in long-term receivables mandated by the court-approved rehabilitation plan. Will this move bring Nenaco out of the red? I certainly hope that they can get out of their financial rut. But that’s a long shot given their reducing their nine-vessel fleet to only six vessels, that generated a net loss for Metro Pacific to the tune of P477.9 million in the first nine months of the year, from a hefty profit of P100.9 million, thanks again to the losses of Nenaco. With P1.7 billion in total liabilities, Nenaco has a long way to go to regain its financial health.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns in The Freeman can also be accessed through The Philippine STAR website (www.philstar.com). He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable. Bobit’s columns can also be accessed at www.shootinginsidecebu.blogspot.com.