Underdesigned

Last month, President Marcos Jr. announced he had gone through the thousands of pages of the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) and found no blank entries. Everyone gasped. All the while, he was reading the wrong document.

Controversy swirled around blank items found in the signed final report of the bicameral conference committee. That final report becomes the enrolled bill ratified by both chambers and then signed into law as the GAA. To this day, there is no clear explanation about the sequence of events that led to the blank entries in the bicameral committee final report to the filled items in the GAA.

A petition questioning the constitutionality of the 2025 national budget has been filed with the Supreme Court because of this. The legislators involved have been summoned to explain before the magistrates.

A few days after that bridge in Isabela collapsed, President Marcos Jr. conducted an ocular inspection of the structure. With no training in engineering and without a proper technical study of the incident completed, the President declared the bridge to be “underdesigned.”

This time, it was the turn of the country’s community of engineers to gasp. The presidential conclusion preempts inquiries into what really caused that tragic incident.

Social media was flooded with posts from those who knew about Engr. Alberto C. Cañete, the original designer of the bridge that fell. It turns out, he is among the most respected civil engineers in the country and was past president of the Association of Structural Engineers of the Philippines.

The respected structural engineer stands by his design. If the bridge failed, it should have been because of other factors such as the quality of the actual construction of the bridge.

Inquiries into the bridge’s failure is still on-going. But those inquiries labor under the shadow of the President’s premature conclusions about why the bridge fell.

Having misspoken too often the past few weeks, it is understandable that the President might be a little wary about making pronouncements except when reading from a teleprompter. A void appeared in presidential communications.

Into that void, by chance, steps in a communications undersecretary – not even formally designated as presidential spokesperson – ready and willing to make pronouncements on everything under the sun. A problem of an entirely different variety now appears to have mushroomed.

The undersecretary entertains the most speculative inquiries thrown at her by reporters. In the course of doing that, she has proposed we rejoin the International Criminal Court (ICC), open an investigation on Sara Duterte’s accomplishments as city mayor and, possibly, fire the Solicitor General.

In a word, she is issuing policy statements off the cuff. Whatever she says carries the presidential imprimatur. A different sort of peril therefore emerges.

The Palace does have a problem with its communications set-up. Perhaps this is the one that is underdesigned.

Calamba

I first visited Calamba in Laguna as a Boy Scout many decades ago. It was a pristine little provincial town loaded with a lot of history as the birthplace of national hero Jose Rizal.

The place has transformed dramatically since then. It is now a full-fledged city with bustling local economy. By 2014, Calamba had become the wealthiest city in Laguna province with revenues amounting to P2.5 billion.

Founded as a municipality in 1770, Calamba became a city in 2001 through Republic Act 9024. Since then, the local economy began to transform rapidly.

By virtue of Executive Order 246 issued in 2003, Calamba was designated as regional center for Calabarzon. By 2013, the DOST and the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines named Calamba as one of the Top 10 Next Wave Cities for outsourcing firms.

Geography plays a large role in Calamba’s dramatic transformation. The city sits astride the busy SLEX and STAR tollways, making it accessible.

The role of leadership in this dramatic transformation cannot be understated, however. The city benefitted from having forward-looking leaders. Among the most significant of these leaders is lawyer Justin Marc “Timmy” Chipeco.

Chipeco served as congressman for Laguna’s second district for three consecutive terms from 2004 to 2013. From there, he served another nine years as Calamba City mayor from 2013 to 2022 (when he was termed out).

During his first year as mayor, Chipeco introduced the city’s Buhayani Festival. The name is a portmanteau of the word “buhay” (life) and “bayani” (hero). It embodies the community’s aspiration to live life heroically, recalling the city’s historic roots.

Chipeco’s 18 years of public service as a congressman and as mayor are well remembered by the residents of Calamba. As he returns to seek the mayorship of a vibrant city, Chipeco commits to deliver more of the visionary leadership that brought this community to where it is now.

Instances such as this one call up questions intermittently raised about the term limits imposed on elective officials. These limits have not prevented mediocre leaders from getting themselves elected. But it certainly served to unduly shorten the years of service available to competent leaders.

Term limits did not solve the problem of dynastic politics. To the contrary, these arbitrary limits encouraged more family members to join electoral politics to fill in for relatives who have been term-limited.

There are numerous other examples of localities with exemplary leaders who are forced to take sabbaticals because of the effect of term limits.