We have received so many reactions, hardly anything negative, to our stand against reclaiming portions of Manila Bay.
Among others, a congresswoman called to say she would stand up against the proposed or planned reclamation projects that would either reclaim land from shore to bay, or create artificial islands in the bay. That is, if she gets reelected, but from my reading of the political situation in her district, her reelection is a given.
A senator who is leading in the poll surveys is also very much against reclamation, saying countless times that it would result in serious flooding problems for the inland metropolis.
Even while I was at the MoA Arena to watch Josh Groban duet with Lea Salonga and Christian Bautista, some friends approached me to say that they too are against reclamation projects, the last count of proposed projects of which are five: Three in the area within the territorial jurisdiction of the City of Manila, one in Pasay, and another in the Parañaque-Las Piñas area.
The proponents, as well as the local government officials supportive of reclamation, claim that there is no more space within Metro Manila to house its teeming millions, let alone work space mostly for “call centers” masquerading for online gaming outfits.
The usual cacophony about “creating jobs” “increasing revenues,” and all that myopic balderdash follows.
Which brings me precisely to my point: Why do we want to congest the metropolis, the present National Capital Region, way out of proportion to its natural carrying capacity? Why must we create artificial carrying capacity instead of dispersing the population to less dense areas?
Daniel Burnham, who envisioned Manila around the environs of the Walled City that Spain bequeathed us, planning in the same manner that L’Enfant designed Washington DC’s national capital center, or Haussmann the City of Lights with spokes of wide boulevards emanating from the Arc de Triomphe, would be crying from his grave. (Burnham also designed for Baguio City, desecrated by a migrant population over-capacity and a succession of vision-less local governments, by the way).
One-fifth of the country’s population converges daily in the NCR area, with 12 million actually residing there. The day-time transients are workers and transaction-agents from Cavite, Rizal, Laguna, Bulacan, Pampanga and elsewhere. They make the cities that comprise the NCR rich, except that most of that wealth just fattens the pockets of dynasts who want to perpetuate their hold on local political power to spoil their offspring and succeeding generations in perpetuity.
They keep pestering the national government for big-ticket projects such as rail systems and overpasses to connect their fiefdoms and transport their constituents when in truth, if they pooled their resources from IRA’s and real estate taxes, they could finance these projects themselves without burdening the entire citizenry from Batanes to Tawi-Tawi.
That is why my long-held proposal is to move out, to decongest. And the first step ought to be the transfer of the national government agencies and offices from NCR to elsewhere in Luzon.
I wouldn’t be averse to a transfer further beyond NCR, to undeveloped Samar island for instance, or even Masbate, except that one, the cost would be too much, and two, it would unduly disadvantage civil servants currently employed in Metro Manila.
Now let me go into some trivia from many feng shui masters I have encountered here and abroad: “Why is your capital facing the setting sun?” they ask. “Why not the rising sun—the glorious East, or the South, both being auspicious directions?”
Indeed, look at the capitals of most of our prosperous and prospering neighbors. Look at the map, or use your cellphone compass, and discover the validity of their feng shui observations. There are so many more such feng shui trivia about the fetid Pasig and the palace beside it where power sits, but we digress too much.
Even our real estate development is based on the Filipino penchant for “uso,” whatever is the “in” place, the “fashionable” area of the moment.
So Taguig is now fashionable, where before it was Makati. Meanwhile, we have allowed Manila and Pasay to rot in urban decay, and what Quezon envisioned as a national government center in “his” city to grow into patches of urban “development” amid oceans of squalor.
A nearby province, Rizal, offered 25 hectares, even more, for the Senate and the House of Representatives even, to relocate from the former’s cramped and rented habitat to the hills of Antipolo bordering Tanay. It is in the East whereas the Senate upon GSIS now faces the sunset. And it is free.
The Senate preferred relocating to Taguig, in the vicinity of the BGC between SLEX and the toney shopping cum residential mecca of the rich. And though it is from one government pocket to another, it cost us taxpayers P5 billion for land acquisition. Ditto for the Supreme Court, whose 15 justices want out of their Padre Faura location, despite the majestic façade of their historic building. They will move to BGC too, where the justices can take turns feting each other over lunch in the pricey gustatory temples of Serendra or Uptown or High Street.
And yet the facts are clear: One, how many citizens transact with the national government? Very few, because most of our needs require the attention of local governments.
Two, if we move the National Government Center with its myriad agencies outside the current metropolis, we would be moving out a million or so civil servants and their families from working in cramped, mostly rented offices into better working environments with fresher air than their current locations. Just look at the cramped offices of the Department of Justice for one, where mezzanines have been force-built to create another space and where workers cannot afford to stand straight up, unless they are below five feet tall. There must be a hundred other similar architectural horrors in the benighted capital.
Three, the transfer of government offices will allow the adaptive reuse of their facilities for cultural, commercial, even residential purposes. Properly planned, it is a solution to the lack of housing in the metropolis.
It certainly would be far-reaching vision and a lasting legacy for the Duterte government to initiate a transfer of the national government headquarters from NCR to say, the area around Clark, which apart from being government-owned, is quite accessible by land from the rest of Luzon, by air, and by sea, through Subic port.
Or, though more expensive because of the infrastructure requirements, to the Rizal-Bulacan-Quezon tri-bounded foothills of the Sierra Madre, near the vicinity of Mt. Irid, which by the way is 1,467 meters above sea level at its peak, almost as high as the decrepit summer capital, Baguio, is.
Wherever, the mantra should be move…transfer. Do not reclaim land from the sea, most especially not Manila Bay.