I read an essay on the jeepney last Wednesday in the Taipei Times. It was an AFP special report which I later read once again in the online edition of this paper.
“Our inefficient dinosaur, the jeepney, must now be relegated to the museum. It is dirty, inefficient, unhealthy,” the AFP report quotes DoF Secretary Carlos Dominguez.
The “king of the road” has become an obsolete “dinosaur.”
In its ode to the jeepney, the feature quoted a 55-year-old father of seven calling his rather dilapidated, smoke-belching, rusting vehicle thus: “This is like my wife. My jeepney and I are together every day.” And worried about his fate on account of a vehicle modernization program of the government, Peter Dallos says that he is angry because “I will lose my job… forced to go home to my province, become a bystander and starve.”
There is a sure element of pathos here, multiplied by the thousands as owners and drivers of 15-year-old jeepneys are phased out of Metro Manila’s streets, for good.
The essay brings to mind a meeting of the executive committee of the DoTC under then secretary Hernando B. Perez. Back then, all the agency heads and undersecretaries of the huge department in charge of air, land, sea and rail transport, plus communications by posts and telegraph (the internet and the cellphone was so new then, and had hardly made inroads into the country) would meet with the boss, secretary Nani, once a month to discuss policy and problems.
It was a good arrangement. Inter-agency problems could be ironed out fast. Moreover, DoTC policies would be threshed out in participatory fashion.
On one such meeting, I had the effrontery to propose that the department should implement a phaseout of jeepneys, a program of attrition where the license to operate old jeepneys in Metro Manila would no longer be renewed, consigning them instead to the provinces, along with a freeze on the approval of new ones. In time, I said, the jeepneys could be gradually replaced by more modern buses which aside from being more fuel-efficient, could load more passengers.
The secretary smiled. “Maganda iyan”, he remarked, “pero politically explosive. Ang daming boto niyan.”
Earlier on, in fact during my first job in government as Postmaster-General of the then Bureau of Posts, the organizers of an international conference of dentists that was to be held in 1986 saw me about a proposed commemorative stamp which had already been approved by my predecessor until the Edsa revolt installed a new government..
They wanted assurance from me that the same would be pursued. They showed me artworks of their proposed stamps, and one of these featured a colorful jeepney.
I initially objected to the jeepney feature, arguing that what was then considered an icon of Philippine culture was something that we should not promote, because it was archaic and a step backward from the transport viewpoint. But I relented because apparently they had incurred expenses in having an artist design the proposed stamp. Besides, I could see that the dentists thought the jeepney, with its colorful sari-manok design, was a source of national pride.
Today, in the age of Duterte, when “change” has become policy and praxis, regardless of the political cost, the jeepney is to finally be phased-out. It will be difficult, and many will be displaced from their current livelihood. But it must be done.
* * *
Harking back to those times, I remember that it was also suggested to secretary Nani not to allow the expansion of the international container terminal in the Port of Manila. The use of containerized cargo was relatively new in the country at the time. Most were still loaded and unloaded break-bulk, which was time-consuming and inefficient.
The suggestion was for containerized cargoes to be unloaded in the Port of Batangas instead, which was then being built under a Japanese loan facility. Subic at the time was still an American naval base.
Traffic will be congested in the metropolis as soon as container trucks use our narrow streets as they travel from port to warehouses and factories. Besides, if Batangas port were to be utilized, the industrialization of the Batangas-Laguna-Cavite corridor would be hastened. The secretary was from Batangas City, mismo.
But as things turned out, the MICT was expanded. Look at the traffic congestion it has spawned.
I read somewhere that the major port operator, ICTSI is finally looking at Cavite as a new location for a container terminal, somewhere near the Sangley area.
It’s a location more than 25 years late.
* * *
Former senator Orly Mercado once remarked that the problem with us Filipinos is we cannot seem to see beyond the tip of our (flat) noses.
Lee Kuan Yew saw how Singapore was in 1960, and envisioned how it ought to be in 1980, thence 2000, and beyond. He built his city-state one part of a grand vision at a time.
Tayo? One problem at a time, often too late and after the problem has festered without solution, creating crisis and chaos.
The other day, a two-meter-long part of the international (and domestic) airport runway was damaged. Not the fault of Naia GM Ed Monreal who has been doing a marvelous job despite inherited problems, but because of poor maintenance and natural wear and tear, while his predecessor slept in blissful nonchalance.
Of course, the entire airport complex, from runway to four terminals, has seen better times. The façade is beautiful, and quite modern when it was first built some 40 or 50 years ago. But while our neighbors envisioned terminals and runways good for the next 50 or more years (as in Changi, Chep Lap Kok, Kansai, Pudong) ours has remained an icon of obsolescence.
The LRT Line from Baclaran to Balintawak was one of the first in Southeast Asia when Marcos built it in 1986. Look at it now, and look at how LRT 1, 2 and MRT have failed to provide the kind of quick and efficient mass transport that our once “poorer” neighbors have. And weep.
Opportunities lost. Meanwhile, tempus fugit. Time, as they say, marches on.
* * *
Last week, senator Eva Estrada Kalaw, a feisty leader, a fervent nationalist, a great friend, was laid to rest.
I wish I could fly back to the country to personally condole with her family but I was sidelined by a bad cold in Taipei. Tita Eva was a mentor along with Tito Doy Laurel in the incipient stage of the fight against dictatorship, when I was deputy secretary-general of the Unido. Later, she was appointed chairperson of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office by President Joseph Estrada, a position I now hold.
She will be greatly missed.
Ave atque vale. Hail and farewell.