PRESIDENT-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s vow to create economic zones and spur development outside Metro Manila should serve as a “strong impetus” for Congress to give its full backing to the shift to a federal form of government, congressman-elect LRay Villafuerte of Camarines Sur said Sunday.
Villafuerte, who earlier sought a “grand coalition” of pro-administration and opposition parties in the 17th Congress to spearhead the switch to federalism, pointed out that this long-overdue overhaul of government structure would bolster the next President’s plan to decongest Metro Manila by attracting investments.
Currently, he said, over 50 percent of economic zones are located in either Metro Manila or neighboring provinces like Cavite, Laguna and Batangas.
He said that the World Bank, in its Mindanao Jobs Report, said that the island alone needs 4.3 million jobs over the next seven years, and that the challenge for government is to stop large numbers of workers in the island-region from migrating to the national capital region in search of jobs.
“I have to create more jobs but Manila is already saturated… I have to relocate them (poor people) but before that, I have to establish economic activity,” said Duterte in a prescon last month.
“President-elect Duterte’s vow to give foremost attention to accelerating countryside development and decongesting the national capital by creating economic zones outside Metro Manila should serve as a strong impetus to the 17th Congress to give its full backing to the shift to a federal form of government,” said Villafuerte, a former governor of Camarines Sur for three successive terms before getting elected as congressman.
Villafuerte said the Duterte-planned economic zones should preferably be put up in provinces where there are coasts, like what they do in Thailand and Indonesia, in order “to spur growth and development strategically and geographically.”
A former chairman of the League of Provinces of the Philippines (LPP), Villafuerte said the switch to a federal government is crucial to attracting private investments and accelerating growth in the countryside under the Duterte presidency “because federalism alone could ensure full autonomy for provinces and cities in charting their respective growth paths, which, in turn, would foster a healthy competition among these LGUs (local government units) in wooing investments from both foreign and local business groups.”
Villafuerte is a stalwart of the Nacionalista Party (NP) that forged a coalition pact after the May 9 polls with the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), the party that carried Duterte to electoral victory.
Villafuerte said the formation of this grand alliance of pro-administration and opposition parties supportive of federalism has assumed greater urgency, given that both the next President and would-be Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez had expressed their support for the federal shift through Charter change.
Duterte called on both foreign and local investors to put up businesses in areas outside of Metro Manila.
Duterte said his plan to create economic zones and attract investments outside Metro Manila, which he described as “already saturated,” was in line with his plan to create jobs and spur development in the provinces.
“Now is the best time to tackle Charter change and the switch to Federalism at the onset of the Duterte presidency minus any suspicion of a hidden political agenda,” Villafuerte said.
Villafuerte recalled that the proposed constitutional reforms, including the federal switch that were tackled by the Consultative Commission (ConCom) created by then-President Arroyo eventually failed to gain traction in the face of public suspicion that Charter change was just a ploy for Mrs. Arroyo to circumvent the constitutional ban on her reelection.
He said the creation of a federal government would decongest Metro Manila and finally stem the unbridled migration of fresh college graduates and young workers from the countryside to the national capital.
“Federalism will empower LGUs to decide for themselves and craft their own development agendas that address their respective resources, problems, development paths and potentials for growth,” he said.
“It is the next step to decentralization and devolution”•and is in keeping with the primacy of genuine autonomy in both the 1987 Constitution and the Local Government Code,” he added.
Villafuerte noted that with the central governing authority in a federal system having control only over national concerns like national defense and security, foreign policy, currency and monetary issues, provincial and city LGUs will have more powers because they will assume primary responsibilities over the development of their respective industries, education and health services, agriculture and fisheries, and local peace and order, among others, with minimal or no interference from the national government.
“Because we have a unitary form of government, most of the administrative powers and financial resources are with the national government based in Metro Manila,” Villafuerte lamented.
“Under our unitary form of government, ‘Imperial Manila’ has exclusive say on how the country’s resources are to be distributed among the country’s provinces and cities, forcing LGUs to often beg for resources from the national government to fund their respective development projects,” he stressed.
Thus, he said, “it behooves all parties in Congress to transcend partisan politics and help the incoming administration push the switch from the unitary to the federal form of government, which is the only way to break the stranglehold of the national government on political and economic powers and allow the provinces and cities outside the national capital to benefit from high growth.”