Manila Metropolitan Government

     Continuing with the Metro Manila thread of thought… I think that all of Metro Manila’s Cities ought to be disbanded… and the entire MMDA be reorganized into a Metropolitan Government. It makes sense! Instead of each mayor having his/her own convoluted color schemes and infrastructure projects, we can have something coherent and that ties all of the City’s boroughs (if you want to be ala NYC), arrondisments (kung feeling Parisian), or districts.

 

     But the problem is… these mayors wont allow that to happen. Over their dead, decomposing, fetid bodies!

 

     The even sadder thing about this is that, it perpetuates the cycle of poverty and mistakes that has been committed… like a wound that continues to fester… unless the City’s fractured political boundaries are unified, solutions concerning housing, infrastructure, transportation, education and delivery of basic services will not be solved…

 

    Just to prove my point… Bayani Fernando was able to resettle all the squatters along the Marikina River, mainly because Marikina is not as congested as Manila and Makati… plus the fact that Marikina’s land values aren’t as high as Manila’s and Makati’s Zonal Valuations…

 

    But how about Manila and Makati, both highly urban gateway cities… which are unfortunately filled with depressed areas chock-full of urban poor… how can you relocate in-house if … number 1, your city’s land values are too high and too expensive to allocate low-cost mass housing… and number 2, if in the first place, you don’t have much land to convert/redevelop into mass housing?

 

    So what happens? They keep the urban poor captive inside their own cities… why? Because of the votes! If Makati’s poor populations were removed… the electorate would be composed of the educated middle class and the handful of rich families who live in Makati’s villages.

 

This explains why the squatters along PNR’s tracks never ever seem to leave…

 

    Now, if a Manila Metropolitan Government is instituted, this would allow the governor to relocate entire depressed communities into more open areas around the metropolis… with more space, lower land values… this allows the government to put in more money into infrastructure and transportation development, while at the same time, freeing the captive urban poor populations and maintaining the electorate status quo. A central city government would transcend petty geographical divisions!

 

Why can’t it be done? Well… you know why!