ASEAN SUMMIT in CEBU

[nab_uang]

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Glo ‘pleased’ with CICC, applauds design, furniture
SunStar - Cebu
December 27, 2006


CEBU’S officials still need to make the Asean summit ceremonial route more beautiful before next month’s event, but overall, President Arroyo was impressed with the summit venues here.

The Cebu International Convention Center’s (CICC) modern design and the furniture at the MIP lounge pleased Arroyo, who visited both venues for the first time yesterday after they were completed last November.

Sun.Star Network Online's 12th Asean Summit watch

She congratulated Gov. Gwen Garcia for the CICC, which she said has “the Cebuano character” that makes it better than the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Manila and those in Davos, Switzerland and Langkawi in Malaysia.

Arroyo marveled at the 21st century design of the CICC, but she reiterated the observation of the national organizing committee (NOC) on the need to improve the technical facilities.

“This really has the Cebuano character. And the furniture is very beautiful, ha. It’s so beautiful it will knock them (other countries) out... They (organizers) were not worried about the furniture, their worry is the audio and technical facility,” Arroyo told the governor at the CICC yesterday.

She was referring to the furniture at the Most Important Persons (MIP) lounge near the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA).

It was the first time the President was able to tour the CICC after its completion last November, a few weeks before the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit was supposed to start.

Arroyo was supposed to be at the CICC for the opening ceremony of the Asean summit last Dec. 10, but the gathering was postponed on account of stormy weather.

Tour

Yesterday, the President checked the two-story CICC from 11:30 up to noontime along with Garcia, Tourism Secretary Ace Durano, NOC officials, Mandaue City Mayor Thadeo Ouano, Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza and Cebu City Reps. Antonio Cuenco and Raul del Mar.

“Ang galing, ang galing. It’s very nice, very nice. It’s better than PICC because the PICC is very old, it’s 20th century and this one, the architecture is 21st century,” Arroyo said.

Her 30-minute inspection started at the right wing of the ground floor where she checked the different country rooms before proceeding to the plenary hall on the second floor.

From time to time, Arroyo asked the NOC officials and the governor what the booths were for, what events or activities will be held in a specific hall and what countries will be occupying the country rooms.

She also checked the briefing rooms and the room where she will hold her press conference at the end of the summit, which has been rescheduled to Jan 10. to 15.

But one of the President’s staff was not very impressed.

Shortly after the President entered the exhibition hall, one of Arroyo’s aides tripped on the door’s metal base that was dislodged from the floor.

“Hazard to ha. Ipaayos to (Have this fixed),” the President’s staff said.

Polishing

At the MIP, Arroyo was also happy to see the holding area for the heads of state and other foreign dignitaries.

“She was very impressed, especially with the world-class furniture and the interior design. But she said the air-conditioning has to be cooler and dapat daw pabanguhin natin yung MIP (the MIP lounge should smell nicer),” said Saul Paa, chief of the Office of the Press Secretary’s media accreditation and relations office.

President Arroyo also pointed out the need to repaint the lampposts and improve the landscaping of the center islands along the Asean summit ceremonial route, from the new airport road to the CICC at the Mandaue City north reclamation area, Durano said.

“I hope our local government units—the cities of Cebu, Lapu-lapu and Mandaue—can put in more effort as they already have,” said Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, co-chairperson of the Cebu Organizing Committee.

However, the governor was glad that Arroyo liked the plan to have an exhibit at the CICC to showcase products of Cebu and the rest of the Philippines. (LCR/With JPM)

[baron]

^ All is set then.

With the confirmation of all the ASEAN leaders that they will be attending the rescheduled summit and the president visiting the CICC for inspection, I am looking forward for this event by January. The integration of the ASEAN community will benefit us in the future.

[Archer sensAtion]

nice one, ha...

[SamuraiArcher]

hope ma open ang CICC sa public....

[INFRACTION]

ganahan ko mag tambay sa CICC

[digitalsuperman]

nindut diay estambayan ang CICC...basin pwedi mag-inom didto inig ka gabii..hahahaa..

[nab_uang]

Asean summit: From main to missed event
December 28, 2006
Sun.Star Cebu
By Mayette Q. Tabada


IRONY makes history.

This catapults Cebu’s hosting of the 12th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) into the top story of 2006.

Sun.Star Network Online's 12th Asean Summit watch

After organizers weathered a storm of controversies during the yearlong preparations, the threat of a typhoon blew off-course the summit, making what could have been Cebu’s Main Event into the Year’s Missed Event.

While hotel executives scrambled to deal with cancellations when the summit was postponed from Dec. 10-14, 2006 to Jan. 10-14, 2007, locals shifted from the irritants of traffic rerouting and security dry runs to speculate on the “real” reason behind the summit’s change of date.

Typhoon Seniang’s maximum sustained winds of 120 kph and gustiness of up to 150 kph certainly did not create the buzz on the street.

Pundits hazarded a different kind of battering if international visitors, including the media, would witness the country’s state of upheaval over a move to change the Constitution.

House of discord

To be affixed in the imagination of the public, an event requires an image of strong emotional resonance.

In terms of political iconography, the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) is peerless in epitomizing discordance and dispute.

In 2003, the Cebu Provincial Government sponsored a national design contest for the Cebu Megadome, envisioned to be the province’s first world-class complex for sports.

Architect Alexius Medalla’s “spinning disc” entry won the prize.

Up to now, he has yet to receive 10 percent of the project cost, or P12.5 million, which the Capitol promised him.

In 2004, Capitol approved a budget of P250 million for the Megadome, which the opposition in the Provincial Board blocked.

In late 2005, after President Arroyo chose Cebu as the venue for the 12th Asean Summit, Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia revived the Megadome project, with revisions.

First to be dropped was Medalla and his disc, deemed too extreme to meet the original December summit deadline.

Capitol chose to award P12.5 million of the P370 million budgeted for the CICC project to Architect Manuel Guanzon and Associates. Guanzon’s alternate design of structural steel, glass and aluminum cladding—featuring a yoke symbolizing unity among Asean nations—was viewed as more realistic.

As things turned out, the twin yokes of deadline and cost bedeviled the builders of the CICC.

Ballooning public expenditure—from the Megadome’s P250-million budget in 2004 to Guanzon’s P370-million redesign to the final P515-million tab to complete targets—had groups decrying the “lavish preparations” for the summit and calling for public accounting.

The runaway financial figures contrasted with the painfully slow transformation of the structure itself.

Among Cebuanos torn between pride and embarrassment, the rundown to the November deadline and the subsequent extensions may have even overshadowed the traditional countdown to Christmas.

Bullish or desperate, Guanzon upped the ante on his half-a-million-peso wager in August to P1.5 million in October against those willing to put their money behind their doubts that he could deliver his “pet project” on time.

Although former senator John Osmeña kibitzed, they did not come to terms on the mechanics of the betting.

Making history

On Dec. 8, 2006, the CICC was blessed and inaugurated.

Hours later, barely three days away from the scheduled opening of the summit, Philippine officials announced its postponement.

The CICC illumines the dim North Reclamation Area like the grandest house in the barrio, awe-inspiring but a little forlorn to its nightly sightseers who know no one’s home.

It’s a ghost of its early December self when full-costumed contingents rehearsed to present a smorgasbord of local culture, part of Mandaue City’s bid to become the “Emerging Convention City in Asia.” (Mandaue, which owns the 3.8-hectare site of the CICC, entered into a joint venture with the Provincial Government for the edifice’s construction.)

Foreign affairs officials estimate that Cebu stands to gain P1.2 billion in economic benefits for hosting the summit.

There certainly is no physical reminder that, at the height of controversies, the CICC rivaled the historic Colon junction and Fuente Osmeña as the setting of street protests.

The center’s perimeter wall has served as an impromptu freedom wall for all stripes of political persuasions—from a cause-oriented group’s exorcism rite to pro-establishment streamers lambasting local broadcaster Leo Lastimosa for “anti-CICC, anti-Cebu” critiques.

Alleged underpayment of subcontracted labor and the electrocution of a welder’s aide last October have not resulted in the CICC edging out the Manila Film Center in the nation’s iconography of the Imeldific and the tragic.

(Rushing to complete the facility for the 1981 international film fest, more than a hundred workers died after their scaffolding collapsed.)

Jewel

Disregarding critics and media sniping at the CICC’s construction, Governor Garcia declared that, “most importantly, we learned that we can do it. And we can do it again.”

Cebuanos will be looking to January 2007 for indications whether the governor’s optimism is justified or if, like Thai owners saddled with albino elephants that are sacred and thus cannot be put to work, the CICC could be the latest of many publicly funded white elephants.

Meanwhile, it’s Cebu’s “jewel of jewels.”

[alleyne]

The fact that the Asean leader's have confirmed their attendance, as well as that of the Asean partner countries, shows that the naysayers of the summit have been proven wrong. True, the postponement was a huge setback but still the organizers and the other people behind it managed to rise to the top. Show them we're ready Cebu! Here's to the success of the 12th Asean Summit.

[wanderlust]

The fact that the Asean leader's have confirmed their attendance, as well as that of the Asean partner countries, shows that the naysayers of the summit have been proven wrong. True, the postponement was a huge setback but still the organizers and the other people behind it managed to rise to the top. Show them we're ready Cebu! Here's to the success of the 12th Asean Summit.

The postponement gave the organizers more time to improve their preparations for the summit. Hopefully the leader-members of the ASEAN will do full justice to all our hard work just to be able to give them a warm welcome.

[jancemsy]

hmm