Lam’s Fontana out as venue for Asean

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – Organizers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting this year have abandoned plans to hold it at the Fontana Leisure Parks and Casino, a tourism official here said yesterday.

Chinese businessman Jack Lam, whom President Duterte had ordered arrested for bribery and economic sabotage but who has since fled to Macau, owns Fontana.

Government agents raided the casino resort hotel recently for illegal online gambling. On Dec. 2, state-owned Clark Development Corp. (CDC) ordered its closure.

Ronnie Tiotuico, director of the Department of Tourism in Central Luzon, said the National Organizing Committee (NOC) for the ASEAN meet is considering the Subic Freeport instead.

Subic hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in 1996.

In February last year, Fontana constructed a new convention center to host one of the ministerial meetings of APEC.

Tiotuico said the NOC had initially chosen Clark, where Fontana is, as one of the venues for ministerial meetings during the ASEAN meet.

ASEAN member-countries are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. 

Incoming US president Donald Trump might also attend the event in the Philippines later this year, as Budget Secretary

Benjamin Diokno said earlier the NOC was planning to also invite the heads of the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea and China for the ASEAN’s 50th anniversary.

“Because of what happened in Fontana, Subic is now being prepared for one of the ministerial meetings,” Tiotuico said, adding that the NOC would be able to finally decide on this by next month.

Tiotuico said the venue must be able to accommodate 4,000 people for the ASEAN summit.

“We have such a convention center in Subic, but the problem there is lack of (hotel) rooms, unlike here at Clark and surrounding areas,” he noted.

Tiotuico said the ASEAN guests could be shuttled between Clark, where there are enough hotels, and Subic, where the meetings could be held. The distance between the two free ports, he noted, is now less than an hour via the Subic-Clark-Tarlac expressway.

The tourism official said the NOC is now bidding out contracts for transport services for the ASEAN participants. 

“There are those who might want to tour Central Luzon, so we are identifying areas we can recommend as tourism destinations,” he noted.

The Office of President had sought a P15-billion budget for hosting the 2017 ASEAN summit.

Diokno said a big chunk of the budget would be for car rentals for the dignitaries. 

Diokno had also informed the senators that most of the allotted funds would be spent domestically – hotels, restaurants and local travel.

“We might even expand the number of visitors,” the budget chief said. “So there is the president of the US, (prime minister of) Canada and others.”