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."