Twist Band

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Wednesday, December 9, 1998

Breaktime 

By CONRADO R. BANAL III

THAT airline in Hong Kong, the one owned by the British group Swire, that Cathay Pacific, it is clear now, really has an attitude. Include arrogance too! The airline reportedly snubbed the Man Called Band ...Wrist Band.

Cathay Pacific claimed it had the full backing of foreign banks, regarding the rehabilitation of our national flag carrier Philippine Airlines. Well and good! Maybe to Cathay Pacific that's its license to be rude. Thus it could ignore even the President of the Republic.

Now we, Filipinos, are a peaceful race, but we do chase anybody with bolo or balisong, even just with bakya, if he as much as stared at us or at our flat noses or something, a second longer.

We do not take insults lightly. What happened to Wrist Band makes me mad myself, dammit! Don't do that to my President. Wrist Band may be a sissy when it comes to the Marcos cronies, sure, and he may be wearing fake hair, but he's still the President.

*****

WRIST Band, according to reports, was trying to patch things up between PAL and Cathay Pacific. These two already abandoned talks for a tie-up to rehabilitate PAL. Wrist Band even said in public, in effect, for us not to worry, because he could bring them together again.

For its part, indeed, PAL was trying desperately to beat the deadline for submission of a rehabilitation plan to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its majority stockholder, Lucio Tan, even crisscrossed the globe to look for a new partner in PAL, to no avail; He may have to shoulder the rehab alone.

And Cathay Pacific was just trying to be cute.

Well, like it or not, Cathay Pacific has the upper hand in all this effort to keep our flag carrier in the air. It's PAL that's in trouble. The government is asking Cathay Pacific a favor. Indeed Cathay Pacific can afford to have an attitude.

*****

A TOP official of Cathay Pacific, as a matter of fact, who was here for the management audit of PAL, bragged to me that Cathay Pacific has been in touch with all the foreign creditors of PAL.

He revealed to me, in so many words, Cathay Pacific actually rallied the creditors to back up the rehabilitation of PAL, which would be done by Cathay Pacific itself and no other airline.

The creditors, it seems, would never go along a PAL rehabilitation plan without Cathay Pacific. That's probably why Lucio Tan failed to get another partner.

So what is this? Now it's the same old exploitation of the East by the West, is it? I just don't know how Wrist Band will take such a not-so-veiled threat from the foreign banks and Cathay Pacific.

*****

MAKE no mistake about it, Bobit, Cathay Pacific is still raking it in here. For years and years now, Cathay Pacific has been poaching in the biggest market of PAL. That's the Filipino overseas contract workers.

There are, officially, already close to three million of those contract workers. They come home every year, and they cannot just take the bus or walk or swim leaving and coming home. They take the plane.

They still present a good market for Cathay Pacific or any foreign airline operating here. Look, such a lucrative market was the very reason why our very own Civil Aeronautics Board, during the administration of Fidel V. Ramos, was suspected of committing rampant corruption.

It was the CAB which allowed foreign airlines like Cathay Pacific to poach on the market of the now-terminally-ill PAL.

*****

PLEASE remember that in 1993, Cathay Pacific got so lucky, it was able to convince the CAB to give it additional 500 seats every six months, come what may, whatever the weather. For what? Well, Cathay Pacific promised to bring in the tourists.

Records at the Department of Tourism do not attest to a big increase in the arrivals of foreign tourists here the past five years. And, so did Cathay Pacific deliver? I doubt it. Cathay Pacific actually just feasted on the Philippines as a market.

I don't know if such a one-sided arrangement will still be tolerated by the Wrist Band administration. My only point is, if Cathay Pacific wants to be cute — okay, even play dirty Wrist Band can always return the compliment.

And if we know the man, he will do just that. Just ask Pampanga Gov. Lito Lapid. Nobody, much less a carpetbagger, can twist the arm of Wrist Band and live to enjoy it.

*****

PAL'S creditors, it is said, are insisting on its having a strategic partner. A what? Well, it's business jargon for "you don't know what you are doing, so you better let others do it."

PAL, in other words, needs a manager. Reports said the manager does not have to be a foreign group. Really? But can somebody please tell me, who else in this country can manage an airline? PAL was a monopoly for so long, right? Monopoly means it was the one and only. This means nobody else knew airlines like PAL.

That's why PAL was looking for a foreign airline. To Finance Secretary Edgardo Espiritu, such a tie-up is even "imperative." The secretary did not say the reason I suspect it is demanded by PAL's foreign creditors.

And Cathay Pacific knew that all along. Nice, no?