Manila Mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada is open to the proposal of Buhay party-list Rep. Lito Atienza—his former rival and former Manila mayor—to elect a governor and vice governor for Metro Manila.
But Estrada said the mayors of the 16 cities and one municipality comprising Metro Manila should be consulted first about this matter.
“Each mayor should be asked about it first,” Estrada told reporters during the inauguration of the modernized Quinta Market in Quiapo last Wednesday. “All mayors are elected by people. That’s why the leader of the mayors [as Manila governor] should also be elected by the people.”
As a city mayor, Estrada is a member of the Metro Manila Council, the policymaking body of the Metro Manila Development Authority.
Estrada agrees with Atienza’s House Bill 4758 that the governor and vice governor should be duly elected to effectively carry out their duties instead of being beholden to the ones who appointed them.
“[The governor] should be elected by the people, not appointed. I do not object to it as long as the people vote for it,” he pointed out.
Under Atienza’s bill, the Metropolitan Manila government will be headed by a governor and a vice governor, like how provincial governments are run. It cites megacities such as New York and Tokyo as its model.
Instead of having an MMDA chairman appointed by the President, Atienza believes that having a Metropolitan Manila government run by a governor and vice governor, alongside the 17 mayors, could effectively solve the metropolis’ perennial problems such as traffic congestion.
This setup was first implemented by then-President Ferdinand Marcos on November 7, 1975 when he created the Metropolitan Manila Commission, the forerunner of the present-day MMDA.
But instead of calling for an election, Marcos appointed his wife, First Lady Imelda Marcos, and Ismael Mathay Jr. as governor and vice governor, respectively, of Metro Manila.