I caught parts of the televised five-hour Senate hearing Wednesday on the proposed grant of emergency powers to President Rodrigo Duterte so he could deal with the severe traffic and transport crisis in Metro Manila, the National Capital Region.
Like an excellent lawyer and self-made logistics entrepreneur that he is, Transportation Secretary Art Tugade made a solid case in portraying the severity of the country’s traffic and transportation problem. With emergency powers from Congress given President Duterte, Tugade needs two years to deal with the two-headed monster. Metro Manila has the worst traffic situation on earth according to Waze, the traffic avoidance app.
Metro Manila has 0.2 percent (620 sq kms) of the total national land area but 13 percent (13 million at night and 14 million by day) of the total population. The capital needs 8,000 kms of roads. It only has 5,000 kms. The 3,000-km shortage is the distance between Manila and Tokyo.
In six years of the BS Aquino administration, his men did nothing with traffic and transportation, except to mess it up some more with large-scale graft and massive indifference.
I don’t think the President needs emergency powers to be able to procure and manufacture locally pronto 6.7-million driver’s licenses and 5.4-million vehicle plates.
Drivers and motorists have been able to make do with having no license cards and car plates for the past three years although they have been, in effect, held up by their very own government which ran on the mantra of “kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” when they were told to pay in advance for the licenses and plates without the Land Transportation Office being able to deliver them.
Asked by Senator Ralph Recto whether LTO would refund motorists for undelivered licenses and plates, Secretary Tugade mumbled something about refunds not being possible because the motorists are not apprehended anyway even if their cars do not have LTO plates and they carry only paper driver’s licenses.
BS Aquino’s transport people led by the much maligned Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya are thought to be corrupt to the core, that is why so many people are suffering today.
For instance, for want of a five-percent kickback, BS Aquino’s henchmen entered into a rotten P3.8 billion yearly contract to maintain the 16-kilometer MRT3 which carries more than 500,000 passengers and which suffers at least one accident daily. But the favored contractor did not maintain the trains because that precisely was the way to make money—pocket it outright without having to spend for maintenance.
But if BS Aquino’s Matuwid na Daan henchmen just wanted five percent or P190 million, why didn’t they just grab the money elsewhere? Like getting it from casino winnings and Pagcor would have been just too willing to cooperate with the scam.
NCR traffic costs the economy P3 billion a day plus $400 million in annual medical expenses because of traffic pollution.
MRT3 accounts for 42 percent of daily passenger traffic, meaning if MRT3 had been properly maintained, the economy would have saved about P1 billion in traffic expenses.
Graft is also the main reason why LTO has no licenses and car plates. Aquino’s henchmen, again led by Abaya, thought of requiring all motor vehicles, old and new, to change their license plates and to pay P430 per car per pair of plates. Bribery was also the idea behind the lack of driver’s licenses. How do you make money? Collect the money but do not deliver the product.
Aquino’s Matuwid na Daan men blamed the Commission on Audit and the courts for disallowing the entry and use of imported plates. CoA disallowed it because LTO did not have a budget approved by Congress to contract and import so many car plates. The courts because the foreign manufacturer of the plates sued for not being paid for his plates. Neat, di ba?
So now, Tugade’s problem is reduced into three Cs—cash, CoA and the courts.
The DOT wants cash badly so he can buy, short and long term, new trains and train parts for MRT3 and the three other train systems—LRT1, LRT 2 and the Philippine National Railways. The money can be pooled into what he calls a sinking fund and not sourced from the annual government budget.
As for CoA and the courts, Duterte doesn’t need emergency powers to deal with them. He can always apply his shock-and-awe formula—meaning threaten them with arrest, if not lethal prejudice, in the same manner he has threatened to declare Martial Law if the Chief Justice hamstrings the summary killings of alleged drug lords and their victims.
I am sure intelligence agents of the army and the police can compile nasty narratives about erring CoA people to make them toe the line. And being the appointing authority for judges, he can threaten judges and would-be judges with not only “shock and awe” (or death threats), but also with outright removal, demotion or promotion, depending on the circumstances.
This leaves the issue of cash. Can Tugade be trusted with so much emergency cash not subject to usual audit and procurement rules? Yes, I must say, based on my first impression of him. Can the men under him be trusted? The Transport chief says he should be held responsible for the actions of his men.
Pending in the Senate are three bills granting emergency powers to Duterte to deal with the traffic and the transport shortage.
Frank Drilon’s proposed Transportation Crisis Act authorizes the President “to adopt alternative methods of procurement for the construction, repair, rehabilitation, improvement and maintenance of the transportation projects.”
In effect, the Senate would want the President to fast-track procurement and to abolish and create new offices without the usual safeguards. Also, the courts cannot intervene with their restraining orders.
Senate Public Services Committee Chairman Grace Poe says emergency power must comply with three things: it should be compliant with the freedom-of-information-law, it should not result in higher costs for consumers, and it should have a deadline, like two years.