Reconstruction

The Reconstruction Commission had its first meeting last week. The news reports carried very little of its plans. That is either because the news reports were scarce in their coverage or there is really very little detail in the work plan of this commission just yet.

What caught my attention in the summary news reports of the first meeting of the commission is the timetable of six months set for the reconstruction effort. That seems highly optimistic.

The Reconstruction Commission is without much precedent to rely on. This is, as far as I know, the first such coordinating body that is premised on full-fledged private sector and government collaboration.

There are, to be sure, a plethora of committees and councils where private sector representatives are allowed seats. But they are, as a rule, merely recommendatory in nature. The policies that emanate from their work are entirely government edicts.

By contrast, the Reconstruction Commission is chaired by a respected private sector CEO. It seems sufficiently empowered to draw up action plans and define priorities. In a word, this private sector-led commission is enabled to do policy-setting.

If this commission prioritizes projects to be undertaken to repair the damage caused by the deluge, it will I suppose not require approval of a government agency such as the NEDA. If it identifies priority areas for private investment as part of a more encompassing reconstruction strategy, I suppose it will not have to clear with the DTI and its investments priorities plan.

I am not sure if the Commission will actually handle money — portions of the international and multilateral assistance we are trying to draw to help us rebuild after the calamity. On the one hand, that might be procedurally problematic unless the incoming funds are specifically directed to the Commission. On the other hand, enabling the Commission to handle funds will help immensely in cutting bureaucratic red tape and cutting the response time.

The Commission, chaired as it is by an internationally-respected executive and co-chaired by a senior Catholic clergyman, seems intended to reassure potential donors that the assistance from abroad will be used judiciously and deployed prudently. That should reduce concern that the incoming assistance will not be commandeered for budget support — or worse, side-streamed by corruption (which is, to put it bluntly, a pronounced concern).

But the Commission can only play the role fully if it is directly involved in designing and executing projects — even as these are to be taken by government departments.

The Commission is, of course, expected to orchestrate private sector efforts to support the reconstruction strategy. These efforts could range from lower-end housing projects, the construction of dams and water containment facilities, new transport systems and, conceivably, ecologically-sound commercial forestry.

All of these areas are regulated by dozens of public sector agencies whose authorities often overlap and clash. This is the reason why the environment for business start-ups is historically hostile making our country one of the least competitive in the world. The Commission will be worth nothing if it cannot help cut through the maze of regulations that routinely paralyze government response to anything.

The Commission, if it so disposed, may recommend policies on a broad range of concerns that bear on our vulnerability to calamities. These policies cover everything from building codes, land use and the proper protection of our waterways.

The Commission may choose to minimize its scope of responsibilities or enlarge its role. That process of defining itself is, I suppose, still in progress as the newfangled council surveys the devastation and struggles to understand its role more precisely.

I think I prefer the Commission define its place in the scheme of things more grandly.

The calamity that befell us is the sum of institutional failure in the public sector. With local government units employing varying building codes, there is no common standard of safety. The property developments worst hit by the flooding should not have been allowed to be there in the first place. One subdivision in Laguna, to cite a most notorious example, stole from the lake and managed to get proper land titles for the area stolen.

Government, too, seems to be unable to do the big things.

For years, there have been numerous proposals to build a large fresh water containment structure for the Candaba swamp, to rehabilitate Wawa dam and create a watershed in San Jose del Monte. None have been acted upon.

The proposed Paranaque spillway just disappeared from the drawing board. The procurement of a radar system to replace the radar cover we lost when we expelled the US bases way back in 1992 has not been done. We have lost all our lakes to fish pen operators and government seems unable to do anything about it. Not only Laguna de Bay but all the seven lakes of San Pablo City have been expropriated by fish pen operators who make millions from colonizing the commons.

For years we talked so self-righteously about rehabilitating the Pasig River. But until the DENR decided to dredge the river earlier this year, nothing was done about the silt that accumulated in this vital waterway.

The MMDA has been given charge of flood-control in the metropolis. But local governments have resisted any authority above them. For instance, two or three municipalities refuse to honor the window in the number-coding scheme that the MMDA decreed.

Even if the work might seem too large, the Commission must at least make a statement in favor of coherent government for our calamity-prone land. This is important, considering we now face a political transition in a matter of months.