Be careful what you wish for

One sure sign that the President of Lubao will truly step down as scheduled on June 30, 2010 is if she pushes through with her plan to rid all waterways and drainage systems in Metro Manila of informal settlements.

The shanties are being built along the waterways as quickly as they were washed away by the floods of “Ondoy” and “Pepeng.” The squatters are emboldened by the fear of local executives, from mayors down to barangay officials, to lose votes, especially with the elections less than seven months away.

If the President falters in her resolve and buries her head in her father’s hometown amid the typhoon devastation, the task will be left to her successor — one of the many headaches that will be inherited by the next administration.

Like Corazon Aquino after the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship, the next president has his work cut out for him.

The next president will have to deal not just with the enormous post-flood rehabilitation work but also with the necessary long-term measures to make the country better prepared to confront climate change.

By the time election day rolls around, the floods around Laguna de Bay would have just receded. Mustering the political will to clear waterways of all obstructions and telling the very poor who will be relocated that they are in fact being kept out of harm’s way is just one of the many challenges facing the national leadership.

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The next president will have to deal not just with environmental neglect but also with the degradation of the country’s democratic institutions over the past nine years.

The country has steadily slipped in global competitiveness, transparency and human development indicators in the past decade. The destruction from recent typhoons can only worsen poverty, hunger and unemployment.

Corruption in the past nine years has been compared to corruption in the 20 years of Ferdinand Marcos. The problem — a persistent complaint of the dwindling number of investors who have not yet bypassed the Philippines in favor of the country’s neighbors — must be dealt with by the next president as decisively as cleaning up the environment.

There is peace to be forged with rebel groups, and law and order to be brought to conflict areas.

Improving universal education and health care – no headline-grabbing issues but crucial in any nation’s progress — must be high on the agenda of the next president. The first thing that our youngest citizens must learn is not how to hold out their hands for alms but how to read and write. They must know how to count and compute, ask questions and broaden their horizons.

Creating the environment that will stimulate economic activity and attract job-generating investments especially in underdeveloped areas must also be given priority.

This includes building the necessary infrastructure long sought by investors, without the taint of corruption.

It includes bringing down the cost of power – the highest in the region – and ensuring energy security, again without a corruption scandal ruining the effort.

Local executives must be given greater power, responsibility and the necessary resources to develop their respective jurisdictions, making them more accountable for the progress of their own areas. A system can be developed to reward the best performers.

Decent jobs are needed to bring back those millions of Filipinos who are working overseas for lack of opportunities in their own country. Many of them are treated as second-class citizens abroad. Their departure has created crises in public education and health care, and the country is running out of the necessary manpower for domestic production.

We have to start making the rule of law prevail, put a stop to influence-peddling and create a merit-based society. Other countries have done it, some of them in just the past four decades even if they were more messed up than us at the starting point; why can’t we?

There are numerous proposals to overhaul the political system and revise the Constitution. This debate will be prolonged and contentious and the next president must not be distracted by Charter change from the many other pressing tasks.

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There are no simple answers to the task of rebuilding from the devastation of floods and mudslides.

Dams are needed for irrigation and hydropower is a clean energy source. We cannot shut down the dams or stop the construction of new ones. What we need is a functioning system for predicting the amount of rainfall and an effective early warning system for the release of water from swollen dams.

A total log ban will not work in areas where local communities rely on the forest for their livelihood. Countries such as Brazil have instead launched programs for sustainable agro-forestry, making local communities stakeholders in protecting the forests.

Laguna de Bay is a major fish and fresh water source for Metro Manila and Southern Tagalog. It must be saved from pollution, heavy silting and the proliferation of too many fish pens. All this is easier said than done.

Someone told me the other day that in late 1972, it rained continuously for 30 days and 30 nights in Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon. The flooding, he said, was even worse than during Ondoy. In Pangasinan, which he visited by plane, he recalled that the flood, as high as rooftops, reached all the way to the sea. Was that an early indication of global warming? Climate change raises the prospect of a more frequent recurrence of such disasters.

The next president cannot micro-manage garbage collection. Local executives must make their constituents realize that filth and improper waste disposal can exact a steep price.

Destroying structures built illegally over natural waterways and drainage systems — not shanties but solid houses, commercial structures, government buildings and even tombs — requires strong political will on the part of the next president.

With all these problems ahead, the winner in 2010 will probably be reminded, many times during his term, of the admonition to be careful what you wish for.