"Imagine if we had a wimp leading us these days. "
"Imagine if we had a wimp leading us these days. "
This writer is very much saddened by the departure from mortal life of our fellow columnist and dear friend—Ambassador Andy del Rosario. In this space, let me express my profound condolences to Mary and the family.
I received the sad news just as I was about to begin a comprehensive physical checkup in a Taipei hospital. Upon sad reflection Tuesday morning last week, I thought of “intimations of mortality” to contrast with Wordsworth’s ode to immortality. It was thus with a bit of nervousness that I began a series of tests in an ultra-modern facility in Taipei.
Mercifully my fears turned out to be rather unfounded, as I was given a clean bill of health afterwards, save for some minor ailments to which were prescribed a little medicine and plenty of exercise for a body used to sedentary habits. Thank God and my parents for better genetics.
Which I am sure Andy also had, having lived to the ripe old age of 78. My last talk with him and Mary were in Taipei more than two years ago when they visited.
Andy’s life was well-lived with many accomplishments, both as an editor, a writer and a diplomat. When I first entered public service as postmaster-general under President Cory, Andy was one of the few editors who gave me encouragement to weave through the difficulties of unaccustomed public life. He was introduced to me by his Standard reporter then, Nixon Kua who had an untimely death last 2012, and who was a good friend and constant buddy.
Hail and farewell, Andy!
* * *
The recent saga of our water contracts and the episode of President Rodrigo Duterte’s righteous anger at the second defeat of the country in the Singapore settlements court over the privatized water concessions is another example of the President’s leadership qualities.
Simply put, it was “in character.”
Would any other previous contemporary president of the republic taken the bull by the horns and acted with such swiftness?
And would the water service purveyors, the “oligarchic” Ayalas and the Salim-controlled MVP business empires have immediately capitulated with a major peace offering if the President were not Duterte?
The peace offering is nothing to scoff at: Waiving their multi-billion-peso claims, collectively some P10.8 billion, which the Singapore arbitral court awarded to them. But that is no longer enough, after the President had taken the matter straight into the court of public opinion in the strongest of terms.
Surely the concessionaires knew that things would come to a head pretty soon. The Singapore arbiters already awarded MVP’s Maynilad P3.4 billion in 2018. And having won on the same arguments, what reason would there have been not to award to Manila Water similarly premised claims? It was just a matter of time before Singapore likewise made the Ayalas win.
Months ago, Manila Water mostly and Maynilad partly turned off the supply of water to many homes in its service areas because Angat was drying up after a prolonged dry spell. Consumers howled and the President himself was sufficiently riled, but nothing much happened other than a little rigodon in the MWSS, while everybody just hoped the rains would finally replenish Angat. The crisis at least goaded government to finally give the go signal for the construction of the Kaliwa Dam to add to Metro Manila’s water sources, and then the reconstruction of the Wawa Dam in Montalban.
Then again, the Supreme Court dunned the water service purveyors for their failure to live up to a clause in the contract that required them to put up sewerage mains to clean the putrid detritus that flow eventually into Manila Bay. Fact is, the two companies had been collecting fees for such a corollary service all these years, but helpless consumers didn’t even realize that they were not living up to the terms of their contract.
Months ago, we wrote a column in this space simply entitled “Water,” which detailed the transgressions of the water service oligarchs. But we also cautioned against rash action, particularly getting the government to take over the oligopolies and run the water system once again.
The precise reason why President Fidel V. Ramos privatized water distribution services in the national capital region through public bidding in 1994 was poor and inadequate service. Millennials might no longer remember those times when nothing would pour out of our faucets unless you had a water pump, or had your own deep well to source non-potable water from. The lower-income classes had to line up for their supply of water each morning with their plastic drums and containers.
Together with better flowing water, FVR also liberated us from the most antiquated telephone services just in the nick of time, when the Internet was already prevalent in other countries and when cellphones would make our obsolete landlines a historic remnant of regulatory incompetence.
So blame not FVR for the privatized water concessions. Even expensive water service is better than having no water at all, to put the matter simplistically. But this is not to say that the partnered monopolies had every right to gouge huge profits from a basic public service.
And if his predecessors looked the other way around, well, that is not in the character of Digong Duterte.
The essential Duterte is what we captured in a simple slogan in 2015: “Tapang at Malasakit”—courage that draws from a wellspring of compassion deep in his heart for the downtrodden and what the Bisaya label as “yano ug kabus” (the everyday man and the marginalized) who have to struggle each day of their lives because ours is a polity that rewards a few who excise monopolistic rent thus perpetuating a most unequal society despite measurable economic gains.
Duterte’s economic managers who are sensible believers in the ability of the free market to deliver goods and services more efficiently, have been able to temper the President’s leaning towards social justice in terms which perhaps no longer fit into the international economic order.
But for the President, enough is enough. And the water saga is what FPJ’s scriptwriters would call, “puno na ang salop.”
Imagine if we had a wimp leading us these days. Or a self-indulgent president easily swayed by deal-making.
When all this plays out, we would be thanking Duterte for taking up the cudgels for the ordinary man and voicing out in the strongest of words his righteous indignation.
No, water service will not go back to the inefficient bureaucrats of the old and discredited Nawasa (worry not about the return of the bad old waterless days), but the service purveyors will realize that corporate greed does not pay with a president made of sterner stuff.
And having set the template for leadership, would the Filipinos turn full circle and elect a president come 2022 whose spine would be less than Duterte’s “tapang” or could not measure up to his “malasakit”? One who would be putty in the hands of the usual suspects?