A week before President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III did his fifth state of the nation address (SONA) in Congress, former President and now Mayor of Manila, Joseph Estrada delivered his own state of the city address (SOCA) last July 23 at the Rizal Stadium. Ousted from office at Malacañang Palace during EDSA-2 in January 2001, ex-President Estrada was only able to deliver SONA three times during his shortened stint.
Unlike P-Noy’s all-Tagalog SONA, Mayor Estrada interspersed his first ever SOCA in English and in Tagalog. The financial picture of the city government — then and now — was presented in charts and tables on video walls. Photos were also shown to depict the situation around the country’s capital one year after he took over Manila City Hall.
When he took over the helm of City Hall on June 30 last year, Mayor Estrada admitted the problems he needed to address were many and overwhelming. “The six years of poor fiscal management, inefficient administration, neglect of duty and graft and corruption made Manila, as the American author Dan Brown said, as the ‘gates of hell’,” Mayor Estrada cited in his SOCA.
He was alluding to the controversial reference of Manila in the “Inferno” novel of Brown that was published last year. The novel described the city as the “gates of hell” through the fictional character Sienna Brooks, who saw in horror the “never seen poverty on this scale, slamming six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and horrifying sex trade.”
Brown’s fictional novel came out two weeks after the May 13, 2013 mid-term elections by which time it was very clear Estrada won by a big margin over incumbent re-electionist Mayor Alfredo Lim. One year after, the same problems remain.
That’s why in his SOCA, Mayor Estrada recalled how he found himself almost helpless to cope with the enormous problems he inherited. His predecessor left huge debts which the city government must now pay. He found to his dismay total unpaid obligations reached as much as P4.4 billion.
The city owed Meralco more than P613 million of unpaid electric bills while another P57.7 million of water bills from Maynilad were due for payment. And to his horror, he found out later the city has unpaid tax liabilities of P684.4 million, the bulk of which were unremitted withholding taxes from City Hall employees.
These, however, did not stop him from doing what he can within budget of city government coffers. Left with little resources on hand, Mayor Estrada admitted concentrating on high-impact projects that do not require much funding. Thus, the Mayor went tooth and nail with traffic management of the city’s roads and avenues.
Aided by his young Vice Mayor, Isko Moreno, Mr. Estrada designated him as his “traffic czar” to enforce discipline on city roads. As chair of the Manila City Council, the Vice Mayor steered the passage of City Ordinances re-adjusting the “truck ban” and imposing terminal system on all provincial buses passing through Manila.
Neighboring cities followed suit to synchronize them with Manila’s new traffic management system. While the local governments of Metro Manila have the political will to address their common problems to ease traffic gridlock and congested areas, certain national government agencies became the spoiler.
A few weeks after imposing supposed higher penalties and fines against erring public transport utilities, agencies under the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) would later hold back and suspend them, specifically on the campaign against colorum. And this compounded the traffic gridlock in Metro Manila.
Yesterday, Cabinet members were called to a meeting at Malacañang to put order on the traffic mess that gets everyone entangled in Metro Manila roads at any time of the day. At the end of the meeting, the feuding agencies agreed to forge common solutions in close consultations with the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and the mayors concerned.
Hopefully, whatever comes out of these consultations would immediately ease the flow of traffic and take us out of hellish gridlocks in Metro Manila.
The episode depicting Manila as “gates of hell” was less than two pages in the 460-page “inferno” novel of Brown. But it created quite a furor and upheaval among local officials like MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino. In a letter he personally wrote Brown last year, Tolentino expressed his extreme disappointment and displeasure over what he described as “inaccurate portrayal of our beloved metropolis.”
While he could not deny the huge slums and grinding poverty in Metro Manila, Tolentino took offense with Brown’s disregard of the strong Catholic faith of many residents as well as their “good character and compassion towards each other.”
“Truly our place is an entry to heaven,” Tolentino wrote Brown.
Brown is also the author of the bestselling novels “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons,” both of which were also made into movies and became big earning films shown here in the country. In 2006, the Manila city council banned screenings of the film adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code,” citing it was offensive to the Catholic church.
Other than Brown’s novel, there is nothing novel in the trial balloon on term extension for President Aquino being floated by his supporters.
It would do well to remind backers of P-Noy’s being extended into office for a second term that they must first be able to amend the country’s 1987 Constitution. With official pronouncements from P-Noy himself of being against any Charter change, any lifting of the one-term limit for the country’s President is wishful thinking.
But there is life for the 54-year-old bachelor President after Malacañang — politically, that is. His two immediate predecessors can validate this. Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo set the precedent. Before she stepped down from office in June 2010, she ran and won a congressional seat as representative of her home district Lubao, Pampanga.
Even ousted President Estrada got to re-invent himself. He ran but lost to P-Noy during the May 2010 presidential elections. But he managed to be elected back into office as mayor of Manila in last year’s local elections. And now, Mayor Estrada vows to make good this time his unenviable role of keeper of the “gates of hell” called city of Manila.