Travel group scores CAB for withholding public document

The Save Our Skies (SOS) movement has questioned the refusal by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) to furnish it with a certified true copy of the air transport agreement between the Philippines and Singapore.

Roehl Galandines, counsel for SOS, a non-governmental organization made up of travel and tour operators, freight forwarders and other tourism-related businesses, said the agreement is a public document which should not be kept from the public.

The SOS sought a certified true copy of the agreement from the CAB since it needs the document in its case before the Supreme Court against Transportation Secretary Pantaleon Alvarez in connection with his role in the signing of the RP-Singapore pact.

"We disagree with the CAB that the RP-Singapore agreement is confidential in nature since this concerns the interests of the country and people. It is not a private agreement but one that involves two sovereign governments," Galandines said.

He added that SOS is not against Singapore or Singapore Airlines, but that it is the government officials who are making the agreement unlawful and disadvantageous to Philippine carriers.

He further added that the Department of Foreign Affairs could not be the repository of the document since it (DFA) was not a party to the negotiations that led to the signing of the agreement on Aug. 25, 2001.

He said in fact, it was Alvarez, and not a representative from the DFA, who signed the agreement on the behalf of the Philippine government.

It will be recalled that the SOS filed a petition with the High Court against Alvarez last March 22 for grave abuse of discretion for entering into and signing the confidential memorandum of understanding on air transport with Singapore.

The group said Alvarez "utterly disregarded the official position of the previous RP air panel and patently disregarded the lawful procedure in entering into said treaty or international agreement."

The previous air panel decided to defer plans to hold air talks with Singapore as there was no urgency in coming up with an agreement and because of serious concerns against it. It instead agreed to hold bilateral talks with Japan and Korea where, it determined, there are growing tourist markets.

The RP-Singapore agreement then already allowed for over 630,000 seats a year despite a total market size of only 158,784 passengers, or an excess of 328 percent. Likewise, the airline seat-tourist ratio then was 14 seats to one tourist.

"There was more than enough room for the market to grow under today’s (old agreement) set-up that adding seats (in a new agreement) will have negligible effect on the market," a ranking CAB official said then in a letter to Alvarez.

It was also learned that the RP-Singapore market has been declining. Filipino travel to Singapore dropped by six percent in 2000 while the number of Singapore tourists or market development, there will be no real benefit to RP in terms of tourism or market development, there will be a serious negative effect on the development of our crown competitive airline industry."

But the SOS said despite the dire warnings issued by the previous air panel and the CAB official, Alvarez hastily entered into the agreement with Singapore even though he did not have the authority to present the Philippines.