Stewardship:l "Everything on earth is given unto us to take care of."

With an average of 14,000 passengers arriving and departing everyday in our facility, and the different agencies, airlines, ground handlers, retail shops, hotels and all their personnel working there, the Passenger Terminal is the center of the Mactan Cebu International Airport. Add to this, the different personnel at the Civil Aviation Authority Area Center, Cargo Complex, the General Aviation Terminal and Locators, Fire Stations, Security Perimeter, Waterfront Hotel and the MEPZ, the Mactan Cebu International Airport is indeed an Airport City.

And when you put together the different commercial, military and general aviation aircraft landing and taking off with close to 150 flights in a day, and the corresponding number of landside vehicles: private cars, rental cars, taxis, vans, buses and cargo trucks that accommodate the passengers and cargo coming and going into these aircrafts, one can appreciate the tremendous amount of coordination and integration needed among a great variety of aviation and general technical competences in the Airport City.

Through many years, the airport has been recipient of many blessings, most noteworthy of which was the 12th ASEAN Leaders Summit in 2007. As I have explained in past articles, MCIAA managed the event while seeing to it that there was no interruption of all daily flights and operations in the airport.

Cebu has also been blessed with great weather throughout the year. And because of this, when there is bad weather in Manila or in places in Mindanao, flights are either diverted or planes evacuated to our airport. Such were the cases in the typhoons of 2007-2009.

We also organized and hosted the first Aviation Mini Expo in our grounds fronting and including the MIP Lounge last December.

Recent Developments

Last Wednesday, April 28, the airport witnessed the Signing of Discussion among the DOTC, MCIAA and the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). After this, there will be an Exchange of Notes (Note Verbale) between the governments of the Philippines and Korea to finally start the update of the Airport Master Plan and Feasibility Study of the New Generation Terminal. This is a grant of $1.1million and will take a year to complete.

Two days before, we organized a joint Air Force-Waterfront-CAAP-MCIAA cleanup of the road from the airport gate to Marina Mall. It is sad to note that the day after the cleanup, posters started to come back. The men of Civil Works, MCIAA will continue to make this main road clear everyday.

Monday Elections

On Monday, the nation will experience the first ever automated polls. I'm sure there will be many hitches, as it happens the first time we try and do something. However, we wish that all sectors of society will cooperate and support the COMELEC in its objective of bringing this exercise into a successful conclusion.

This may be the first time that there are a number of candidates, parties, and alliances in such an election. This is actually good news - that so many want to come forward and offer themselves to become servants in governance. We give them all the benefit of the doubt.

I would just like to bring forth some thoughts:

Exercise your right to choose who you think is the right person for the job.

My man should be speaking for himself and what he can do, instead of talking bad about any other candidate.

My man must have shown himself to be a good family man, the good leader he professes to be, in his own family first, and in his other endeavors.

My man must be someone who does no shortcuts, but follows every rule, taking his place in the lines, in traffic, etc

My man must be one who is principled and who does not use temporary alliances or agreements, in order to be what he wants to be.

Do not vote for a person or a party just because he or the party has the most chances of winning. If people do this, they take out more of the chances of the right person to win.

Most important, after all is done, support and help others support the candidate who wins, regardless of whether he was your choice.

Let's follow our dream.