Gordon builds a new Singapore from Subic Bay

Gordon builds a new Singapore from Subic Bay

By Cecil Morella

MANILA (AFP): The Philippines may seem at times like a creaking, unwieldy oil tanker, but Richard Gordon thinks he has the drive that will set the slow-moving vessel on the right course for the next century.

Gordon is master of Subic Bay, the former U.S. naval base- turned-freeport northwest of Manila that the 50-year-old politician sketches as the next Singapore: a gleaming economic engine that will amaze all of Asia.

With a salesman's tongue and irrepressible confidence instilled by his Filipino-American parents, Gordon ranks alongside President Fidel Ramos as the man who has re-established the Philippines as a magnet for foreign investors.

"There is so much apathy in this country and this comes in many forms -- being a watcher, spectator, kibitzer, finger pointer, blame thrower, without looking for solutions," Gordon said in a recent interview here.

"If there is an effective leader, we (Filipinos) have a tendency to bring him down. We call him names," he said.

The remarkable success of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) has earned its chairman frequent mention as a possible successor to Ramos, who has said he will retire in 1998.

Gordon does not deny his ambition, and indeed relishes the chance to step into the international limelight when Subic hosts the next summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November.

"People have been talking to me about being president someday. I have thought about it," he said. "Having the title is a great honor. But the greater honor is to create jobs and opportunity."

In 1992, Washington turned over several facilities to Manila after the Philippine Senate struck down a new bases treaty. The multi-billion-dollar package including Subic Bay, the sprawling repair and supply yard of the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet.

But disaster loomed. Left virtually unguarded, Clark Air Base was immediately pillaged by looters who carted away everything, including toilet bowls and kitchen sinks.

Gordon, however, rallied a corps of thousands of unpaid civilian volunteers from nearby Olongapo to preserve eight billion dollars' worth of infrastructure and facilities at Subic.

With Ramos' blessing -- and political backing cutting across party lines -- "Chairman Gordon" has spent the past three years bulldozing obstacles, cajoling and arm-twisting, making countless promotional trips abroad.

Subic has now been transformed from an empty, windswept 18,000-hectare (45, 000-acre) site into a bustling industrial enclave, developed with government subsidies -- since ended -- and Taiwanese cash.

So far, it has drawn nearly two billion dollars in investment, much of it from blue-chip companies such as Acer Inc. of Taiwan and the U.S. carrier Federal Express Corp. Japanese firms are expected to move in soon, after Tokyo agreed to help develop another area of the base.

With 37,000 people, Subic now produces or assembles a range of products from garments to armored personnel carriers and computer motherboards, the vanguard of an export drive that last year was worth US$169 million -- nine times Subic's overseas sales for 1994 and 1.2 percent of the country's total.

Beneath the stocky, moon-faced leader's amiable mien is a sharp lawyer's mind and a temper triggered at times by the sight of sloth or insolence.

A "rude" American investor was summarily thrown out of Subic, and Gordon is famous for plastering the honkytonk city of Olongapo, where he served as mayor for 10 years, with slogans that read: "Laziness is Prohibited".

That mercurial style has naturally created enemies. Opponents in Olongapo accused him of having "dictatorial" tendencies, and local reporters who write negative stories about Subic or Gordon complain they are frequently blacklisted and banned from the SBMA press office.

In apparent emulation of Singapore, Gordon has carried out some un-Philippine acts of discipline in his empire. Subic now imposes the highest fines in the country for traffic violations, littering and environmental damage, which could go as high as $5,000 for oil spillage in the bay.

"Singapore is a model," he admitted, "but I do not approve of its social engineering methods."