No blanket authority to DOTr

Without doubt, Filipinos from all walks of life would want to support the proposed grant of emergency powers to President Rodrigo Duterte to solve the daily hellish traffic congestion in Metro Manila and in other highly urbanized parts of the country. The proposed emergency powers for President Duterte to allow him to address the traffic crisis in Metro Manila are still being deliberated in both chambers of the 17th Congress.

Car owners and commuters alike go through the traffic jams which are causing productivity losses of about P2.4 billion a day. Those estimates were based two years ago on a study conducted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Browsing through tweets while stuck in traffic along Roxas Boulevard last Friday night, I read the posts of Senators Loren Legarda and JV Ejercito in their respective Twitter accounts. Obviously, they, too, were stuck in gridlocks.

@loren _legarda:“Almost 4 hours from National Museum in Mla to Makati? Horrendous traffic! That’s in a private vehicle. What more for public commuters?”

An obviously piqued Sen. Ejercito ranted in his @jvjejercito posts one after the other:

“Our plane touched down at 7:50pm, and we are still in front of NAIA Terminal 3 after an hour! Unbelievable!”

“2 hours upon touchdown, we are still in front of NAIA 3! Wild!”

“Means we do need to pass emergency powers very soon!”

“Carmaggedon on a Friday night!”

“Approaching 3 hours here in NAIA area…”

“INFRA projects need to be fast tracked!”

And who has not suffered three to four hours of travel for the roughly 23.8-kilometer congested stretch that is EDSA?

Last week, both the Senate and the House of Representatives wrapped up their respective public hearings on the proposed bill. In his maiden state of the nation address last July 25, President Duterte identified the bill on the proposed grant of emergency powers as among the urgent administration measures for immediate passage into law by Congress.

The House transportation committee chaired by Catanduanes Rep. Cesar Sarmiento created a subcommittee that will consolidate 10 bills seeking special powers for President Duterte. Among the authors is Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.

At the Senate, Senator Grace Poe chairs the committee on public services that is handling the proposed emergency powers bill.

But it is another story if transportation officials are asking for blanket emergency powers while showing lackluster performance. Worse, some of them reportedly have previous ties to private corporations that have vested interests in transportation projects of the government.

These uncomfortable realities are precisely what the House Speaker raised during a recent budget hearing for the Department of Transportation (DOTr) where he took to task Secretary Arthur Tugade and his team.

The evolving sentiment in Congress is to entrust to the DOTr Secretary – as the “alter ego” of the President – to solely exercise the needed emergency powers to fast-track infrastructure projects to help ease traffic.

Tugade has been criticized by the Road User’s Protection Advocates for his “fantastic and incredible” solutions to traffic – such as installing cable cars over the length of Laguna de Bay – which the group said showed his incompetence, along with his handpicked team at the DOTr.

Alvarez has echoed widespread frustration regarding perceived ineptitude of government to find common sense solutions to the traffic mess even as the proposed bill is pending before Congress.

Alvarez scored in particular DOTr Undersecretary for Air Operations Bobby Lim for visiting only Davao airport out of the country’s 80 airports in the more than two months he has been in office.

“I’m not satisfied with their performance so far. They are in their first 100 days and we should be experiencing changes already. They should have done this yesterday,” a visibly irked Alvarez pointed out.

“So it cannot be that we’d allow blanket emergency powers. We have to identify which areas will need emergency powers. It cannot be a blanket coverage,” the House leader stressed.

Aside from being Speaker of the House, the Davao del Norte congressman is also secretary-general of President Duterte’s political party Partido Demokratikong Pilipinas (PDP-Laban).

For his part, Kabayan party-list Rep. Harry Roque Jr. rightly pointed out most of the provisions in the emergency powers bill are already provided for in the Constitution. He also questioned the DOTr if they define “emergency” as stated in the Constitution to be “sudden, unforeseen and dangerous.” The worsening traffic problem is certainly neither sudden nor unforeseen.

“What you want is blanket authority to disregard the laws when you want to disregard these laws. It is not something we can take lightly,” Roque argued.

Tugade justified the blanket emergency powers proposal, saying it will allow the government to forgo public bidding to expedite the process of procurement as well as to enter into negotiated contracts.

These extraordinary measures, however, are what must be safeguarded amid the dismal showing of Tugade and his team, along with concerns over whose interests do they truly serve.

Alvarez sternly warned Tugade’s undersecretaries not to serve the interest of big corporations where they were previously employed or have ties with. “Let us not fool ourselves. In every administration, private corporations put their people in departments covering their business... Whose interests are you serving?” Alvarez rhetorically asked the DOTr officials.

Vast powers are entrusted to people who have shown they are capable of dispensing such for the benefit of the greater good. It is not something that you ask for and expect to be granted with if you cannot even comply with the basic requirements of your job.

To paraphrase a popular Spiderman blurb: “With great powers comes great responsibilities.”

But for now, until these DOTr officials shall have improved their performance and until they have shown to the public that they are truly no longer beholden to their previous masters, there should be no blanket emergency powers for them.