How do you make Metro Manila better?

Josh Lim

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Filipino in heart, in word, and in deed

Amalgamation.

Why? Look at the map below.

Whenever we refer to "Manila", we actually refer to this hot mess of a national capital region, and not the city that forms its historic center. That is, unless you're in Metro Manila itself and you need to distinguish between Manila proper (the City of Manila) and another part of the metropolis.

Metro Manila is presently divided into sixteen cities and Pateros, the region's lone municipality. Because of the way the metropolis is structured, you effectively have seventeen different sets of public services, seventeen different local governments, seventeen different education systems, and basically every other public good that should be provided to the region's 11+ million inhabitants replicated 17 times over. This leads to three things:

1. Inconsistency in the delivery of public services. Residents of each of the seventeen constituent cities and municipalities will have very, very different public services depending on where they live. Makati has better public hospitals than Navotas, yet this shouldn't be the case since they are part of the same region. Despite the presence of a national emergency telephone number (1-1-7), the cities still operate their own hotlines: Makati has 168, while Marikina has 161. The examples go on and on.
2. Inefficiency and unneeded competition. Instead of freedom of mobility for both residents and businesses, they are hampered by artificial barriers set up by the fragmentation of Metro Manila. Instead of having one single business permit to operate in all of Metro Manila, you will need one permit for each and every city/municipality you operate in. Revenues, particularly from infrastructure where the entire region benefits, are not shared equally and so Metro Manila's development suffers. If you live in Quezon City and, let's say, your driver's license was confiscated by the traffic police in Las Piñas, you have to go all the way to Las Piñas City Hall to reclaim your license. No one benefits in the end from this.
   
3. Corruption and political disenfranchisement. The constituent cities of Metro Manila are effectively run as fiefdoms of the political elites, and they operate out of sheer self-interest without any consideration for the region's residents. This is especially the case with Makati, where Jejomar Binay and his family have effectively ruled the city since 1986, when Corazon Aquino gave it to him. Now he says he "rebuilt" Makati and Lee Kuan Yew was his inspiration. Well, if that were the case, he wouldn't be embroiled in so much scandal. Or as Winnie Monsod put it, "Lee Kuan Yew made Singapore immensely rich, while Makati made Mr. Binay immensely rich".

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) does play a critical role in harmonizing some government services (e.g. garbage collection, traffic enforcement on major roads, regulation of region-wide public transport), but it's not enough. If a mayor doesn't like what the MMDA is doing, he/she can openly defy its whims and convince other mayors to join him/her: for example, Binay did it in 1995 against the implementation of road space rationing ("number coding") in Metro Manila. I'm perfectly fine with a powerful mayor, but if your powerful mayor only seeks to use his/her powers for the benefit of him/herself, his/her political allies and the bilking of his/her city for his/her benefit (a charge that can also be levied at other cities in the region as well), then you have a king, not a mayor.

Seriously, Metro Manila has grown to the point where we need to live under one city government, not seventeen. Whether that will look like the amalgamation of Toronto (a bunch of neighboring municipalities being annexed outright by the mother city), the Tokyo Metropolis (merger and formation of a strong regional government with the powers of individual mayors being significantly curtailed) or the formation of Greater London (merger while keeping traditional divisions, reducing the mayors to ceremonial figureheads) is irrelevant at this point, so long as the region is amalgamated, the powers of the mayor-kings of Metro Manila are curtailed, and the economic wealth of Metro Manila spread around for the entire region to benefit from, not just those who are lucky enough to live in the more-well off parts of the metropolis.