I once had the chance to talk with President GMA in a dinner with other journalists when with help of a big map she gave a graphic account of her government’s program for building infrastructure. While she rattled of impressive figures of how many kilometers of roads, bridges etc have been built and will be built, I exclaimed out of the blue. “Yes, that’s an idea. Why not call your party “The Infrastructure Party”? She smiled and I suppose she thought I was joking.
But seriously, the promises and accomplishments of an infrastructure party is immediately measurable. It will have a program of projected targets and tangible results. That can be presented to the electorate. As it is now, the parties asking for our votes are outdated Liberals and Nacionalistas, bravely reviving largely irrelevant ideas that belonged to an earlier phase of our history. Indeed, the two parties came to being during the Independence Movement. Enough. Lakas-CMD, the ruling party may be more contemporary insofar as it keeps step with a political program that addresses local and international conflicts.
There are other parties but not worth mentioning as far as I am concerned including Kampi which is a bad translation of ‘ally’. Who are enemies and who are allies is not relevant to an ordinary citizen who understands what government is for. What I really wanted to say when I blurted out the idea of an ‘infrastructure party’ is to vote for performing candidates who are intent on building the infrastructure that would improve the quality of life of ordinary citizens. Only by doing so and demonstrating our will to put our house in order can we promote the economy attractive enough for investors to come and provide jobs for our teeming population. It may be ironic but the most accessible and acceptable ideology is the vision that comes with building roads, airports and mass transport.
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Over the holidays, my husband and I drove out of town, passing through both the south and north superhighways and saw how much had changed from the last time we traveled by road. For sometime now I have been meaning to write that going traveling through EDSA is so much more pleasant — it is cleaner and better looking including the vines that have been planted on the posts supporting the skyways. I have also been to newer and better equipped provincial airports when I went to Tacloban and Iloilo. That is as far as real life experience of President GMA’s projects I can get without reading press releases or newspaper articles. From my limited experience infrastructure in the Philippine has made progress. It could have done more without oppositionists trying their best on how to derail it.
President Arroyo has said again and again that her government’s program of infrastructure will be the hallmark of her administration. She wants to be remembered by the road networks, airports, seaports and farm-to-market roads that were built during her wake as the foundation of economic development. Her infrastructure strategy was to divide the country into five Super Regions: North Luzon Agribusiness Quadrangle, Central Philippines as the country’s Tourism Center; the Urban Beltway and Mindanao as the country’s Agribusiness Center in the South, and the IT Corridor.
This is the blueprint of the Super Regions economic plan. Through this economic concept of the Super Regions program her government invested in the “natural advantages and natural resources of a section of our nation so that when harnessed together, the major economic regions are larger than the sum of its parts.” She is convinced the Super regions blueprint is the only viable future for the country’s economic progress.
To achieve this vision she has had to raise funds, the most important source of which was the passage of the E-vat that inevitably made enemies for her and promptly launched the survey to call her the “most unpopular president”. For myself, as I told my son how can one survey say that Filipinos are almost unanimously hopeful for the coming year and another survey which says Filipinos also in droves do not like her. That sounds contradictory if she has governed and brought the country this far and Filipinos don’t like her. The logic would be Filipinos do not like the country to advance. Oh well. My son immediately answered not at all contradictory. The only way she could secure this viable future is through unpopular decisions and these she has made. Which brings us to the next issue — who or what will continue this program? Looking at the political scene and the candidates elbowing each other for frontrunners, I am not confident about presidential derby in 2010. Indeed, I predict an immediate unraveling of all that has been accomplished as soon as a new administration after the 2010 presidential elections comes in. We will begin from square 1.
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It is good that the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) has submitted their candidates for chairman of the Commission on Elections. The group’s candidates are Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo and lawyer Carlos Medina of Lente, an election watchdog, to the post of chairman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec). Melo and Medina, the group said have the integrity, qualification and dedication to improve the electoral system.
It must be remembered that it is the President’s duty under the Constitution to appoint the Comelec chairman. However, President GMA in an unprecedented gesture decided to open wide the field of nominees so that those who are otherwise just as meritorious but without backers, whether politicians or influential NGOs like the PPCRV, could still be considered. She appointed a panel that would screen all candidates whether they are applicants or nominees to draw up a short list from which she will select the new chairman. Advertisements were put out in the major newspapers to sound out the widest public. The shortlist will be drawn from some 28 candidates culled from submissions to the panel.