Politics and airport naming
It’s sad that politics is intruding into an act as innocent as naming an airport. The committee on transportation of the House of Representatives recently approved a bill that would amend Republic Act 6958, the law that created the Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority. The amendment, pushed by all Cebuano congressmen in the House, intends to rename the Mactan-Cebu International Airport to the Lapu-Lapu Cebu International Airport.
Former Cordova mayor Adelino Sitoy, who is currently the presidential adviser on legislative affairs and head of the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office, is opposing the bill mainly because the name effectively eases Cordova out of the picture. Cordova, like the airport, is in the island of Mactan. Instead, Sitoy proposes the retention of “Mactan” in the airport’s name.
Interestingly, among the signatories of the bill seeking to amend Republic Act 6958 is Aileen Radaza, who is representing in the House the lone district of Lapu-Lapu City. The report on the bill seeking to rename the airport followed stories about Pajo Barangay Captain Junard Chan planning to run for Lapu-Lapu City mayor and claiming Sitoy was the one who prodded him to aim for it.
The renaming issue actually started on the right foot. National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) chair Rene Escalante wanted the name of the facility to be simply Lapu-Lapu International Airport to “popularize and immortalize” Lapu-Lapu’s name in the country. The hero vanquished the Portuguese explorer working for the Spanish crown, Ferdinand Magellan.
Del Mar, however, lobbied for the retention of the name “Cebu” for the airport when “LapuLapu” alone would have sufficed. After all, the word “Lapu-Lapu” is meant to honor a man, not the city that now carries that man’s name. The insertion of “Cebu” thus gave Sitoy the reason to lobby also for the retention of the word “Mactan.”
Perhaps Cebu leaders should first arrive at a consensus before raising any proposal on the renaming of the airport to the national level. Or why not consider the NHCP’s pure intention and just name that airport after Lapu-Lapu?