Decayed

Drive around Manila today and you will understand how cities die.

The process is slow but comprehensive. The blight spreads to every nook and cranny. The decay eventually infects everything, from public infrastructure to the morale of its citizens.

First, the city loses its luminescence. Then it loses its sense of order. Public services simply collapse. The residents lose their optimism.

There is really nowhere to go to in the City of Manila these days. The once-lively tourist district has succumbed. Avenida Rizal has lost its grandeur. Quiapo is no longer a center of commerce. The Manila Zoo features only malnourished animals. All the esteros have become cesspools. The only spectacle at the bay front is a large mass of garbage. The whole place has become endless gray.

This is a city without a single bright spot.

The city government does not seem inclined to fix house. The streets flood at first excuse. There is no enforcement against trash thrown into the waterways. There are no new infra planned. Garbage collection is spotty at best and many streets resemble dumps.

It is as if this city is left to die in the most miserable manner imaginable.

No wonder that some in President Duterte’s constitutional commission suggested moving the nation’s capital to another place. The City of Manila has become a national embarrassment.

It was not always like this.

When Lito Atienza was mayor, he pursued numerous projects to beautify the city. He took a page from the experience of the New York ghettoes that transformed beautifully after the local government lit the streets and fixed broken windows. Muggings dropped and old neighborhoods became gentrified. Old warehouses metamorphosed into fashionable flats or functional offices.

I recall he asked the large corporations to contribute to light up Manila’s bridges. Now those bridges are dark again.

Atienza built numerous public parks so that residents in the various neighborhoods could congregate in them. Those parks have fallen into neglect.

He tried to transform Avenida Rizal into a bright pedestrian friendly mall to entice LRT commuters to stop over, shop, watch cultural presentations or eat in clean restaurants. When he was replaced as mayor, the whole plan was scrapped. The granite walkways were torn up. Avenida Rizal has since deteriorated into a dark, muddy strip no one wants to go to.

He developed the bay walk area as a place for Manila’s residents to gather and the Remedios Circle area as a place for restaurants to congregate. They were wholesome places that brought some sense of revival for the old city.

In a word, Atienza brought a vision to his job and an enthusiasm for seeing things change. Unfortunately, he was succeeded by ageing patriarchs who did not look far enough into the future.

Maybe the destiny of this city is all a matter of political leadership. Next May, the residents of Manila will have to decide if they prefer the decay to worsen or choose a leader with the passion to reverse the decline.

Power play

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) seems to be always caught in the middle of power plays by the big boys. Last week, four of its commissioners, reporting back to work after a period of suspension, found themselves suspended once more.

If this rigmarole continues, the undermanned ERC will not be able to fulfill its mission: to ensure sufficient and affordable power for the economy to grow.

Last year, the chair of the ERC was replaced because of corruption issues. He was replaced by former justice secretary Agnes Devanadera, who promised to clean up the agency. Since she assumed the post late last year, however, her four commissioners were suspended most of the time.

Apart from the internal problems hounding the agency, the ERC seems constantly under attack from street protestors. Guised as “cause-oriented” groups, these street protestors appear bent to undermine the agency’s credibility.

It is an open secret in the industry that these protestors are acting at the behest of rival power players. In pursuit of their business interests, these power players think nothing of crippling the regulatory agency.

For instance, street agitators accuse the ERC of favoring power distributor Meralco by accepting the applications for seven power supply agreements during the extension of Competitive Selection Process (CSP). The accusation is repeated constantly even as all parties concede that it was not Meralco that asked for the extension of the CSP.

Expect the hired protestors to become even shriller in the coming days.

The ERC recently indicated that it would reject PSA applications that did not have environmental clearance certification (ECC). That is reasonable. Unless the PSA applicants get their clearances, they cannot build their plants.

Meanwhile, the PSAs of new plants that do have ECCs ought to be approved immediately. That will pave the way for building the generating plants we need for our energy security.

Unless new power generating capacity is installed, our rapid economic expansion will be put in jeopardy. Because of thinning reserves, consumers will have to pay more for their electricity because of speculation in the wholesale electricity spot market.

Yet, investors in new generating capacity who have yet to acquire environmental clearances seem to be demanding the ERC postpone approvals. They want the universe to stand still until they get their clearances. That can only mean sacrificing the general interest to suit the particular business interests of some investors.

In the meantime, they are trying their best to discredit new power plants with environmental clearances in an effort to delay approval of their PSAs.