MMDA abolition

To abolish or not – the question is being asked again as certain quarters take issue with actions and policies of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority. The question is emanating mostly from officials who feel that the MMDA is overstepping the bounds and undermining local government autonomy.

On the other hand, there are those who believe certain basic services can be more efficiently delivered in a megacity like the National Capital Region (NCR) by a coordinating body, in this case the MMDA.

Some quarters go one step further, suggesting that the NCR is better headed by a governor – one who is elected, unlike the MMDA chief who is appointed by the president of the country.

This will overcome some NCR mayors’ belief that they need not go along with the policies of an unelected official. The mayors note that they already have the Metro Manila Council (MMC), which ideally should lead to a Metro-wide coordinated approach to such matters as traffic management, mass transport policies, garbage collection and flood control.

The counter-argument here is that the MMDA chief has Cabinet rank, functioning as an alter ego of the appointing power, the president. Through this alter ego, the president can oversee the NCR.

From 1990 to 1994, Metro mayors chose among themselves who would head the MMDA’s predecessor, the Metropolitan Manila Authority. With the creation of the MMDA through Republic Act 7924 in 1995, however, the agency chairman again became a presidential appointee independent of the Metro mayors. But the MMC is the MMDA’s policy-making body and governing board.

The mayors are supposed to coordinate with the MMDA. Yet we still have disjointed traffic management as well as uneven garbage collection and cleanliness programs.

*      *      *

The creation of Metro Manila and an executive agency with jurisdiction over the entire region was one of the initiatives of the first Marcos regime that was not dismantled by the post-EDSA administrations.

In November 1975, Ferdinand Marcos the elder carved Metro Manila out of the city of Manila, Quezon City, two cities and 12 municipalities of Rizal province plus Valenzuela town in Bulacan. Marcos declared the area the country’s regional capital, with the Metropolitan Manila Commission (MMC) as the governing agency.

Control over the region that has long accounted for about a third of gross domestic production and is home to over 10 percent of the national population gave the Metro Manila governor enormous clout.

Unsurprisingly, the first and only person to occupy the post throughout the Marcos regime was who else but the other half of the conjugal dictatorship, Imelda Marcos. Wielding absolute power together with her husband, Imeldific’s word was law in Metro Manila.

Corazon Aquino retained the MMC, appointing Joey Lina as officer-in-charge governor for a year followed by Jejomar Binay and then Elfren Cruz who served until 1990. But of course no one ever again enjoyed the vast powers wielded by Imeldific as governor.

It didn’t take long before the elected local government executives of Metro Manila chafed at taking orders from an unelected MMC chairman.

With the progressive diminution of the powers of the MMC head, delivery of basic services and implementation of policies across the National Capital Region became increasingly uncoordinated.

*      *      *

Last month the vice chair of the House committee on Metro Manila development, Manila Rep. Joel Chua, called for the abolition of the MMDA, saying it was encroaching on the mandates of local government units, duplicating the functions of national agencies and wasting billions in public funds. The Metro Manila Council, Chua believes, can address concerns in the NCR.

If the MMDA has done a stellar job of coordinating the delivery of services that are clearly within its mandate, it could have more support against its abolition.

But its performance on flood control and sewerage management has been underwhelming enough for people to believe that the task should be returned to the Department of Public Works and Highways.

The Pasig River ferry service, meanwhile, can be handled by the Department of Transportation.

As for traffic management, MMDA personnel are notorious for lurking in the shadows particularly along thoroughfares with light traffic, waiting to pounce on motorists violating speed limits or committing minor infractions – the types that caused an uproar against the largely money-making no-contact apprehension policy or NCAP.

The MMDA is also the agency that’s taking out the stoplight countdown timers and replacing traffic lights with supposedly smart equipment whose signaling systems adjust to traffic volume. But these “smart lights” are useful only when most motorists have gone home late at night and the stoplights can blink out.

The unpredictability of signal light changes under this “smart” system is confusing to motorists – and can lead to hefty fines, if ever the NCAP is revived. The cities of Manila, Parañaque and Caloocan teem with these NCAP traps.

Hurray for Sen. Mark Villar, a former public works secretary, who has filed a bill requiring countdown timers on all traffic and pedestrian signal lights.

Government VIPs with security escorts equipped with blinkers and wang-wang to part traffic for them will never understand motorists’ predicament over the absence of traffic countdown timers.

This inability to comprehend the problem is just one of the issues reinforcing the image of the MMDA as a tone-deaf agency that has outlived its usefulness.