Last Friday, I flew to the Laguindingan Airport in-between Cagayan de Oro (CDO) City and Iligan City as I was invited for a talk with pro-life groups. I should have returned to Cebu on the next day, Saturday but then we were told that my Cebu Pacific flight was cancelled due to bad weather conditions. Stuck in CDO, it gave me a true picture of airport operations there in Misamis Oriental, where a year ago, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) moved its airport operations from the Lumbia Airport to Laguindingan some 40 kilometers away from CDO.
The last time I was in CDO was December 2011 just a couple of days after Typhoon Sendong devastated CDO when the Cagayan River overflowed, killing nearly 1,300 people. A few months later CAAP effected the airport transfer. To the horror of Cagayanons, this transfer had a huge economic impact on CDO because CAAP opened the Laguindingan Airport without any runway lights and navigation aids, so the airport is closed at night. Why did CAAP allow this to happen? I can only reckon that they did this to please President Aquino and show to the nation that he was out inaugurating airport projects to prop up his sagging image.
While in CDO, I learned from no less than CDO Mayor Oscar Moreno (he joined us for dinner with Elpie Paras in Italiannis) a year after Laguindingan Airport opened…CAAP still uses the Lumbia Airport Control Tower. Wow! How could CAAP officials allow this to happen? The world‘s worst air disaster was the Tenerife crash when a KLM Jumbo 747 crashed into a Pan Am 747 because the control tower failed to see if the Pan Am plane already exited out of the runway in the Canary Islands.
Surely these people know that safety is paramount in flight operations and the purpose of having a tower right at the airport itself is for airport controllers to guide aircraft into the runway… and if (simbako) a plane skids off the runway (this happened a year ago to Cebu Pacific in Davao Airport), it is the tower controllers that immediately dispatches the fire and rescue services. This is totally absent in Laguindingan Airport thanks to CAAP.
Last Saturday when my flight was cancelled, it was also then that I realized that Laguindingan Airport’s pre-departure area was totally inadequate or too small to accommodate passengers. I don’t know who was the designer of this airport (no, I’m not blaming the Aquino regime for its design as it was approved during the time of Pres. GMA) but it was built for small aircraft operations without forecasting for the economic growth not only of CDO but also that of Iligan City. But instead of cashing in on the stupidity of this design and blame it on GMA, the Aquino regime proceeded to operate this airport and endanger passengers using it. As we’ve always said, life is cheap in the Philippines because our government doesn’t care for human life.
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I was invited to CDO as guest speaker together with Buhay Party-list Congressman and former Manila City Mayor Lito Atienza for the Philippines For Life National Leaders Meeting 2014 at the VIP Hotel. Its theme was “Tindig, Barug, Tindog†We Stand as One for Life & the Filipino Family.†Yes, a great majority of the Delegates were from the Religious groups from all over the country who wanted to know the status of the Reproductive Health (RH) Law at the Supreme Court, which Human Life International chief Dr. Rene Bullecer gave them all his thoughts about some scenarios.
Rep. Lito Atienza gave delegates insights on the workings of the present Congress… especially in this supposedly new era where the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) has been declared unconstitutional. Rep. Lito Atienza is the only Congressman I know who cheered the members of the Supreme Court in their declaration that stopped the political ambitions of the political elite who have made Congress their personal piggy bank to be handed down from generation to generation. Rep. Atienza also gave me a copy of his new book, “Light from my Father’s Shadow†and I suggest that you should get a copy of this piece of Philippine political history.
My talk was about the Philippines on the Crossroads. I told them that the handwriting is on the wall…that we can already see or even prophesy who will be the personalities who would run for President in the year 2016 and the delegates saw a Binay in the future. I gave them scenarios as to who would challenge Binay and amongst the lists I gave, it pointed to Sen. Bongbong Marcos who has the machinery and motivation to run versus Binay.
It’s a gloomy political picture and the delegates wanted to know what else could we do? I merely pointed out that we are now in God’s hands because last June 8th, the Philippines was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and a month later the Napoles scam blew up in our face and we didn’t even lift a finger on this issue that has angered the Filipino people.
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Email: vsbobita@mozcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com.