It's the Airport, stupid!

Bevy of new financially empowered tourists - the Chinese Mainlanders.

by Mortz C. Ortigoza

When I was in Cebu City recently, I was amazed at a bevy of Chinese tourists queuing  at the lobby of the swanky Water Front Hotel & Casino as their buses kept unloading them even at the wee hours of the night.

That’s why I wondered why Chinese tourists were not on the top list of visitors at the Hundred Islands in Alaminos City. Instead, those that top there were Filipino expatriates (balikbayan), Americans, and Canadians.

“Chinese Ambassador Liu Jianchao said that last year there were 270 thousand Chinese tourists that visited our country. It is winter now in China, and Alaminos should have a piece of action on the number of these tourists,” I posed to Alaminos City Mayor Nani Braganza recently during the press conference he called with Department of Education Secretary Armin Luistro.

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LCP ‘storms’ Supreme Court

Members of the 122-strong League of City Mayors in the Philippines marched last March 9, 2011 to the Supreme Court after it flipped flopped on the city hood bids of the 16 towns in the country

by Mortz C. Ortigoza 

In the special general assembly of the 122-strong League of Cities of the Philippines (LCP) held recently at the Century Park Sheraton Hotel in Manila, its secretary general Hernani Braganza (Mayor of Alaminos City) thundered before the hundreds of saber-rattling mayors and their supporters that the entry of the 16 towns to cityhood would gnaw at P3.7 billion of the yearly Internal Revenue Allotment from the national government.

“11,000 employees’ ang matatangal, housing, PhilHealth, kalsada, farm-to-market roads, proteksiyon sa kalikasan...” Braganza rabble roused.

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