BBM’s legacy?

With barely a month before the midterm elections and three years to the end of his term, it is strange to see that there is hardly a whimper from the Palace about big legacy projects that will help BBM redeem his family’s reputation. On the contrary, his elder sister has demolished any possibility that the children of our late dictator will clean up the Marcos name.

If BBM wants to think about legacy, he has to deliver earth-shaking projects the country needed decades ago but which former presidents failed to accomplish. There should be little time for indulging in petty politics, but that’s what the children of Ferdinand the First are doing now.

Thus far, the only thing BBM has delivered is former president Digong to the ICC. We must admit that that takes some political daring to do, and its execution was rather good. Doing that has apparently cost BBM a lot of political brownie points, if the latest surveys are to be believed. That’s one more reason why the Palace should be in panic mode to deliver on projects and promises to prove he has the kind of leadership the country needs now.

By doing not much, BBM is proving his critics in the Duterte camp and elsewhere right – that he is indeed too laid-back, too spoiled (anak mayaman), and too detached from the real problems of the country to be useful. Even his own Cabinet members seem to be copying BBM’s laid-back attitude on their deliverables and also doing not much in the face of the country’s many dire needs.

The only real and tangible accomplishment of BBM to this day is the successful public bidding and award of the modernization of NAIA. And as expected, the private sector group that won the award has quickly delivered many basic and much-needed improvements in the airport’s management on day one.

Unfortunately, even this sole achievement of BBM is being questioned before the Supreme Court for some claimed procedural lapses. It is easy to suspect that a taipan who failed to get special treatment on new lease rates is behind the legal move to bring the whole house down. Or maybe we just have too many lawyers with not much to do.

One other possible accomplishment is BBM’s strong stand in support of Philippine rights in the West Philippine Sea. In that regard, he has rekindled the country’s former strong relationship with the United States. But even there, BBM failed to capitalize on our strategic importance to the US. Sayang, because Stephen Miran, the head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, emphasized that the administration also sees security commitments as indelibly tied to economic ones.

Given Miran’s view, we should have been able to get better treatment than a 17 percent tariff from Donald Trump. But there was no visible move on BBM’s part to get special treatment – nothing in comparison to the full-court press launched by the Vietnamese.

All the pending big, bold projects are infrastructure; most are leftovers from previous administrations. It is almost safe to say that BBM will not inaugurate a single major infrastructure project initiated by his government. The only big projects with a chance of being inaugurated before BBM’s term expires are the MRT-7 and the New Manila International Airport in Bulacan, both projects of San Miguel.

The North-South Commuter Railway project is still mired in right-of-way problems. Those are not new problems for infrastructure projects in this country. But those can be solved and expedited with political will. I recall that when we were rehabilitating the NLEX under the Lopez Group, we had ROW roadblocks too that were very frustrating.

So, we went to then-president GMA and told her our problem. She appointed the late congressman Rene Diaz, who was coordinating her programs in the region, to assume responsibility for securing the ROW. I don’t exactly know what Rene did, but the problems were quickly solved, and PGMA had her desired inauguration day realized.

DOTr Sec. Vince Dizon has the track record of being an action-oriented guy in the past administration. But he needs a very strong assist from the Palace – someone who will be able to talk to mayors and governors as well as judges handling ROW cases. Sometimes, they need someone with the gravitas of the Executive Secretary (who can harm their careers) to talk to them, if not read them the riot act, before BBM is seen as a lame duck. Unless this happens quickly, the big infra projects will remain stranded.

In trade and industry, BBM needs a game changer. Here we are, with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) managing over 400 ecozones across the Philippines, but not creating much of a splash. Maybe PEZA is too politicized. Or the kind of investors they have in Vietnam and elsewhere in ASEAN do not take anything our government manages seriously.

BBM needs a really bold project that is truly out-of-the-box. He should open negotiations with Singapore to manage a free trade zone using standards that were successful in Singapore’s similar projects in China and Vietnam. Think of an island like Guimaras – that’s close enough to Iloilo City and its amenities for it to work. Let Singapore run it without local interference, and we can sit back and learn how to achieve success in our PEZA zones.

In agriculture, it is time for some bold actions too. BBM can launch a program that will truly modernize agriculture by using technology. There have been rapid changes in farming in the last few years that were revolutionary. State-of-the-art digital and satellite technology can be used from planting to marketing, providing farm credit and crop insurance.

So many things to do and so little time to do everything. Hay naku, gising!

Boo Chanco’s email address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on X @boochanco