By Louie Logarta | The Daily Tribune September 18, 2014
The Indian federal government is reportedly finalizing a controversial plan to evict some 90,000 squatters living in shanties around Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, India amid reports of terrorist attacks being readied by the Taliban.
According to wire reports, assistants of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have fired off a letter to the Maharashtra state government to immediately relocate and rehouse those living by the airport based on their assessment that the security threat from the slums is considered “grave.”
New Delhi is on heightened alert for terror threats to aviation in the wake of the attack last June by the Taliban on Karachi’s airport where 36 persons were killed, and the incident soon after at Peshawar where gunmen fired at an incoming plane, killing one passenger.
Evicting slum dwellers in India’s financial capital has always been contentious and past efforts have had little success, a Bloomberg story said, as local political considerations come into play.
“There are vested interests… politicians count on these people as a vote bank, so they won’t allow anything to happen to them.”
Sounds familiar?
It should, because these are the exact same issues the Aquino administration is confronted with arising from its decision to build a third runway to ease air traffic and passenger congestion at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), which is rated by not a few travel watchdogs as “world’s worst airport.”
At present, the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) is trying to determine where to position the third runway — which would increase combined take-off and landing events by some 40 percent – as the NAIA is hemmed in on all sides by private residential communities, like the Multinational Village owned by El Shaddai leader Mike Velarde, squatter settlements and two major thoroughfares.
This early, however, critics (read: politicians) are already questioning the feasibility of squeezing the new runway into the already-crowded NAIA reservation fearful of the massive social unrest that would surely come about when construction work begins, especially since portions of the key C5 expressway would be affected, including the flyover connecting C-5 to the South Luzon Expressway.
Nevertheless, its construction is deemed crucial in light of estimates by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines that airlines had lost at least P7 billion per year due to the congestion at the NAIA. They pointed out that a crowded runway means airlines would have to spend more for fuel while delays entail their own costs.
A quick fix to the NAIA congestion problem should have been the proposed $10-billion alternate international airport in Sangley Point (Cavite), which is being pushed by DoTC chief Joseph Abaya as his legacy to his province mates when he leaves office, but the Japan International Cooperation Agency says this may not materialize before 2025.
The government’s furious drive to disenfranchise businessman Robert John Sobrepeña and kick him out of Camp John Hay experienced a major hiccup when a Pasay City court dismissed a billion-peso estafa case that state prosecutors had earlier drawn up citing claims he had continually refused to settle huge rental arrears.
In rejecting the estafa raps, Judge Pedro de Leon Gutierrez of the Pasay Regional Trial Court found no merit in allegations of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) that he had purposely concealed some P1.15 billion in rentals of locators to avoid payment of accumulated debts due the government.
Sobrepeña, chair of the Camp John Hay Development Corp. (CJHDevco) which was contracted during the Ramos administration to develop certain prime areas in the John Hay Special Economic Zone (JHSEZ), consistently declared confidence in being vindicated by the court as his company had always been transparent in all its dealings with the BCDA.
Since 2012, CJHDevco has been entangled in a court dispute with the BCDA, which supervises the JHSEZ, arising from P3.4 billion in alleged rental obligations dating back to the late 1990s for which they were directed to undergo arbitration.
In Baguio City, it is widely acknowledged among coffee shop habitués that BCDA has long been hounding CJHDevco in behalf of its “silent partner” mega-land developer Ayala Land Inc. The idea here is to have the CJHDevco discredited, using the courts, which would then be the basis for the cancellation of its existing contract and pave the way for the entry of Ayala.
CJHDevco leased some 246 hectares of land from the JHSEZ in October 1996, wherein it would pay P425 million or 5-percent of gross revenues annually for the first five years and P150 million for the sixth year and succeeding years.
On its first year, CJHDevco remitted P425 million but asked to defer rental payments due to faulty revenues. So, in 1999 and 2000, BCDA and CJHDevco inked two MoAs outlining this arrangement in lieu of the original contract, whereby the court found no element of estafa to be present. In July 14, 2000, the MoA was even approved by the Office of the President upon recommendation of the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel.
Last June, itchy-fingered Department of Justice lawyers, without even waiting for the results of the court-ordered arbitration, opted to sue Sobrepena for estafa based on allegations by BCDA officials he caused the release of P900 million in stockholder dividends for 1998, 1999 and 2000 despite assertions CJHDevco was encountering financial difficulties.
In his ruling on Sept. 3, Judge Gutierrez said the government failed to establish probable cause that Sobrepeña had indeed fooled the BCDA into agreeing three lease restructuring agreements to defer the aforementioned rental obligations.
