At last Friday’s Nanka Forum, a weekly media kapihan at the Nanka restaurant in QC that I’m privileged to co-host, one of our guests was electoral reform activist Glenn Chong, a high-school amateur programmer, CPA-lawyer, and former congressman—in short, a man of substance.
Glenn regaled us with blood-curdling stories of Smartmatic servers transmitting 2016 poll results even if they were incontrovertibly shut down—perhaps the Comelec’s equivalent of “ghosts in the machine.” In his small province of Biliran alone, the discrepancy totaled over 200,000 votes, which also happens to be the margin of victory of VP Leni Robredo nationwide.
Could any of this have compromised Duterte’s electoral mandate? As a matter of fact, it’s the other way around, because Glenn doesn’t dismiss the widespread rumor that Duterte was actually cheated of five million to six-million votes, at a time when current fugitive Andy Bautista was running Comelec and Mar Roxas was putting to good use a multi-billion-peso LP war chest accumulated over six years under PNoy.
Another kapihan guest was MMDA general manager Jojo Garcia, who gruffly informed us that his agency was ready to implement a resolution by the Metro Manila Council to ban driver-only private vehicles from Edsa during rush hours.
Such vehicles account for up to 70 percent of Edsa traffic, so the ban makes sense if only as a stop-gap measure while longer-term fixes are devised. We hope MMDA does not overlook the proper workarounds, such as clearing away sidewalk vendors and other obstructions along the alternative side streets that banned vehicles will have to use, or managing the crowd of “ride-sharers for pay” who’ll sprout up at both ends of Edsa.
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Our third kapihan guest was Con-Com member professor Eddie Alih, formerly chancellor of the University of Mindanao in Tawi-Tawi, who gamely took on the predictable media questions about uber-blogger Mocha Uson’s “pepe-dede-ralismo” video.
I’ve long believed that the risqué Miss Uson, who’s followed by millions of Duterte diehards, is better left to herself as a digital free spirit rather than being weighed down by the burden of an Assistant Secretary title. Unburdened, that raunchy video would have achieved its objective of putting “pederalismo” on the radar screen of her followers without stirring up all that harrumphing from the prim-and-proper crowd.
In any case, that little dust-up was quickly upstaged by another face-off over federalism, this time involving the President’s economic team, who declared themselves opposed to the whole idea of federalism (although they later narrowed down their criticism to only the Con-Com’s draft version of it).
Among the questions and claims brought up by economic managers Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Neda’s Secretary Ernesto Pernia, together with my attempted answers based solely on newspaper accounts:
Transition to federalism will cost P131 billion in the first year alone. I suspect that nearly half of this estimate from Secretary Pernia actually comprises outlays unrelated to federalism (e.g. establishing a lot more courts of law in order to unclog the notoriously backed-up judicial dockets) or that involve avoidable duplication of functions (e.g. the costs of regional administration can be reduced by combining or consolidating provincial governorships, assemblies and administrations).
Up to 95 percent of government employees will be laid off. This wild number from Secretary Dominguez misses the obvious: A lot of government employees will be laid off from the federal payroll because they’ll be transferred to regional payrolls, as their offices, functions, and budgets are downloaded to the regions.
Ambiguity about revenue sources and expenditure assignments between federal and regional levels. This is a Dominguez concern perhaps caused by the Con-Com formulation that “at least 50 percent” of government revenues will be reallocated to the regions. But as a practical matter, what’s likely to happen is for the federal gov’t to first cover all its expenses—especially debt service—before the regions get their revenue shares as a residual. If the federal share is still more than half, then it’ll have to shed off some more functions, otherwise the system still ain’t federalism.
Clearly, the economic team should have gotten more involved in the earlier days of the federalist discussions. But it still isn’t too late to bring them up to speed, provided they drop their dismissive attitude and get with the program that the President himself has put on the table.
Right now, LP Senator Kiko Pangilinan has been saying “it’s possible” that his Senate committee on constitutional change may vote against charter change, citing as one reason the apprehensions raised by Duterte’s economic team. This is why it’s always a good idea, whenever you’re quarreling among yourselves, to keep it inside and shut up when outside.
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On the infrastructure front, right-of-way issues—the traditional bane of construction projects in this country—are predictably now emerging as serious, perhaps even existential, threats to Duterte’s ambitious Build Build Build program.
Completion of the P67-billion MRT Line 7 project is being held up by a ruling from the Malolos regional trial court that would force government to pay a prohibitively high price to acquire property for a planned train depot site.
As well, Metro Pacific’s plans to start construction of the NLEX-SLEX connector road have been stymied by delays in acquiring right of way, only half of which has to date been acquired by government.
It’s well known that most of government’s institutional experience in ROW is really lodged in the engineers and other specialists of DPWH, who’re out there building roads and bridges every day. This was supposed to be leveraged by the creation of a DPWH-led inter-agency task force to fast-track ROW solutions. What’s happened with that?
And on the political front, internal dissension continues to tear up the ruling PDP-Laban party in a stubborn face-off between Senator Koko Pimentel and Mindanao lawyer Rogelio Garcia. The party chairman, Duterte himself, has already thrown up his hands in exasperation and told his party-mates to stop adding to the problems on his plate.
Meanwhile, the newly minted Hugpong ng Pagbabago, nominally a regional party in Mindanao, has jumped to the other end of the country and recruited the Solid North through its latest member, Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos. She joins a growing list of new members: Senator JV Ejercito, former PNP chief Bato de la Rosa, Maguindanao’s Sajid Mangudadatu.
Lately, Hugpong has even volunteered to help PDP-Laban with its “internal problems”. At the rate these regional alliances are being put together, it won’t be long—perhaps by 2022?—before this regional party, under its millennial leader Mayor Sara Duterte, becomes a national party to reckon with.
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