Grand plans for 2007

The year 2007 would certainly be a busy year for many of our political leaders who have set moist eyes in the coming May elections. Unfortunately, most of those who deserve to be elected into office are the ones who are reluctant, or are not interested at all to run in the coming May 14 national and local polls.

Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) chairman Bayani "BF" Fernando is one of them. Over breakfast in our regular Tuesday Club meeting at the EDSA Shangri-La, BF dismissed reports that he is running for the Senate. Palace political strategists have been trying to convince BF, who belongs to the Lakas-CMD party, to run under the 12-man Senatorial slate of the administration coalition.

Tucked to the credits of BF is his phenomenal transformation of Marikina City from a town known as "shoe capital" of the Philippines into a boom city that it is now after his three consecutive terms as mayor. His wife, Marides, is continuing his legacy when he went on to become MMDA chairman in 2001. His political will to enforce and implement the MMDA programs and infrastructure projects, no matter how unpopular it made him to affected sectors, BF has become an idol for the many law-abiding Filipinos who found sound leadership in him which they would follow and emulate.

The MMDA chairman, though, is not titillated at all. He tells me that he has already set his eyes to launch, not any Senatorial bid, but three major projects of the MMDA. BF is visibly excited on the prospects of success of these projects he is launching one after the other by March this year.

His first project, he says, is the 24-hour radio station that the MMDA would soon run and operate "exclusively" as a public service for traffic monitoring and advisory, as well as a government media outlet for disaster-reporting and coordination. This is the former D’WAN radio station, a government-sequestered media entity once owned by the late Marcos crony businessman Roberto S. Benedicto. The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has turned over the franchise and the AM frequency of this idle sequestered radio station facility to the MMDA.

BF is no stranger to radio broadcasting because he himself has his own weekly public service program over DzBB, the radio station of GMA Channel 7. He has a one-hour radio program, "MMDA sa GMA" that airs every Sunday, 9 to 10 a.m. Once the MMDA radio goes on air, BF says it would provide "real-time" traffic advisories from all highways and roads in Metro Manila reaching Batangas in Southern Tagalog and to Tarlac in Northern Luzon. The MMDA radio station will serve as a reliable source of information for drivers and motorists about traffic flow and travel time, road accidents that might affect traffic, and advisory for travel re-routing. Additionally, BF plans to install radio speakers in MMDA waiting sheds so that people can also monitor and be guided by the traffic movements.

Next in the lineup of major projects of the MMDA chief is the "Tulugan sa Bayan" for minimum wage workers, employees and transient travelers going in and out of Metro Manila. As the name of this project means, it is literally the place for "sleeping in town." The first of this facility is now under construction using the abandoned four-storey building owned by the state-run National Power Corp. (Napocor) at Bonifacio Drive in Port Area, Manila. The MMDA has entered into a joint venture agreement with the Napocor to run this facility. So far, the MMDA has spent P16 million to reconfigure the former Napocor offices into 1,000-bed sleeping quarters, equipped with two-bed bunkers and common bathroom/toilet facilities.

BF is currently attending to the nitty-gritty details of how to run this "Tulugan" facility like providing a coin-slot operated shower and two-bed bunkers that would have installed lockers to keep valuables. To avail of a sleeping bunker, he said, a minimal fee of P25 would be charged to those who will check in to entitle them to a 24-hour stay, P2 of which is for the use of 20 liters of water for shower or bath.

And the third major project of BF is the use of electronic chips to effectively implement the MMDA’s organized bus routes program. This program has so far been successful in decongesting major road and highway networks from colorum buses and the wasteful plying of too many buses with few passengers. Since the MMDA implemented this program, he noted, there has been a marked improvement in the load factor of buses and thus, it improved the earnings of the bus firms.

Under this new project, he says, the MMDA would provide electronic chips for free initially to bus companies to install them in their bus units. The chips would work like the electronic pass being used in tollways. The electronic chip readers would be installed along designated bus routes of the MMDA to check against colorum buses, to catch cutting trip violators, and eventually monitor also the compliance of drivers to speed limits. If this project succeeds, BF plans to require the installation of electronic chips in all public utilities.

All three projects are under the Metro Guapo program of the MMDA chairman to transform Metro Manila into tourist and investor-friendly destination in the Philippines. BF is micro-managing the completion of these MMDA projects within the first quarter of 2007. Obviously, it did not include any of his reported plans to run for the Senate.

At this stage, BF would rather remain in the Executive Department where he can make things happen as he sees fit than to run as one of the Senatorial candidates of the Arroyo administration. That is why he could not see himself performing any better in Congress as a lawmaker where he would just be reduced to merely paying lip service to his ideas and vision for the country. I am under the impression that BF has higher goals than being in Congress. From where he talks about his vision for the country, it appears to me that BF has grander plans in the near future. Perhaps before the year 2010, we shall see where BF is actually headed for.

Now that BF has counted himself out of the Senate race, it seems it is only Presidential Chief of Staff Michael Defensor who remains in the running among the Arroyo Cabinet lineup for the Senate. In the meantime, the head count continues. President Arroyo and her Cabinet had their first meeting at the Palace last night. Other than the May election, I wonder what grand plans they laid down for 2007.

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