Time to test the new MCWD Board
So there is a new set of Board of Directors at the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) but pardon me if I don’t congratulate almost all of them who are my friends, as I believe that they were chosen by Mayor Edgar Labella because of their political affiliations. I have always believed that anyone who is appointed to MCWD should have a plan to solve the water problem of Metro Cebu.
I understand that former Cebu City councilor Jose Daluz III has been groomed to be the next chairman of the board of directors of MCWD. But in fairness to Daluz, he pointed out that their appointments still have to be confirmed by the Local Water Utilities Administration before they can convene and elect the chairman from among themselves. Mayor Labella appointed the five new members to the MCWD Board. Aside from Daluz, other appointees were lawyer Francisco “Frank” Malilong Jr., former city Mayor Alvin Garcia, lawyer Manolette Dinsay, and Miguelito “Mike” Pato.
Incidentally, Daluz resigned as head of the South Road Properties Management Office November last year, saying that one must not hold any government position prior to his appointment to the MCWD Board. We know for a fact that Mayor Labella earlier sacked the old members of the MCWD Board, most of whom were appointed by former mayor Tomas Osmeña, for their gross failure to provide solutions to address the water crisis in Cebu.
Meanwhile, Daluz admitted that as a new board they cannot solve the water crisis overnight, as they still have to immerse themselves in how the MCWD should be managed. This is a very clear proof that the new board really has nothing to do with our water crisis, much more in running the day-to-day affairs of MCWD.
For starters, I would like to see this new board solve the raging floodwaters that inundate a portion of the Banilad-Talamban road near Family Park. I mean if this board cannot find solutions to such a small problem in this MCWD facility, then there is no hope that we can expect them to perform miracles in solving our water crisis. So let’s use this issue to test the new board. It is easy enough to set up desalination plants to solve our water problems, but at what cost? Abangan!
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We have been told that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said that the best way to end the country’s decades-old insurgency problem is through localized peace talks with the senior New People’s Army (NPA) leaders on the ground and not with the NPA, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and National Democratic Front (NDF) leaders abroad.
“Our local peace initiatives I think will bring faster gains,” AFP chief Lt. Gen. Felimon Santos Jr. said, “we can end this insurgency because our local chief executives are directly talking with local commanders of the NPAs.” Through the localized peace talks, the local government units are directly informed by local NPA commanders about their grievances against the government. They can immediately institute actions that address these concerns.
While I totally agree with this, there are still CPP/NPA/NDF soldiers who are loyal to CPP chairman Jose Maria “Joma” Sison, so in a way this move is divisive to the insurgency movement. However, this is good because we know too well that united we stand, divided we fall. What we further learned is that what drove the people, especially those in far-flung communities, to join the NPA is the absence of governance and government services in their communities. While this may be true, it is only in extreme cases. Most NPA recruits come from universities or schools that have professors who are actually helping the underground movement hire new recruits to fight the government.
Meanwhile, the last we heard from President Rodrigo Duterte is that he is only interested in having one-on-one talks with Sison. For me that position is untenable. Also National Security adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. himself has openly objected to the resumption of peace talks with the CPP/NPA/NDF leadership.
With this latest report that the AFP will be talking with the locally-based CPP/NPA/NDF, I’m sure that it would bear more fruit, unless those people that they will be talking to are hardcore ideologues. At this point, we can only wish the AFP luck in finally putting an end to this decades-long underground insurgency.
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