A good study was politically bad

I knew of someone who had the privilege of working in the inner most sanctum of Malacañang Palace many years ago. He would however describe his office as nondescript even if most legal documents would not be signed by the president without his signature. To keep his function away from any lobbyist, his table was not easily reachable by people outside of the palace.

This guy was, one day, directed by the president to be a part of a group of select men to study the humongous traffic problem in Metro Manila. It was supposed to be a focused group with him being the only moron among intellectual giants such that he was mostly listening to the intense exchange of profound ideas. What did they come up?

The paper submitted by the group to the president recommended firstly to limit the number of cars to be owned by any family. In their study, they noted that the families found in gated subdivisions would drive a minimum of six cars daily on the roads in Metro Manila. In the garages of such homes, there usually were more than six cars parked because at least two vehicles were in reserved status. The group recommended a kind of novice statutory enactment to achieve the purpose.

The second recommendation by the focused group was to disallow the importation of second hand motor vehicles. In the time of their study, these were called “surplus” brought into our country. In today’s parlance, these are the multicabs and dump trucks. The study group found out that the laws of Japan, where these units come from, prohibited the operation of vehicles that reached a certain age like four years because these were environmentally unfriendly and expensive to maintain. Our importers then bought these discards for practically a song and sold them here for understandably huge profits.

According to this “nondescript Malacañang guy,” the present jeepney modernization program of the government is but a derivative of their third recommendation with some noticeable modification. The focused group noted that the engines of the PU jeepneys of many years were the so-called Japanese surplus. At a later time, the multicabs were converted into jeepneys. The Malacañang study team recommended that the PU jeepneys be replaced by double deckers. Their rationale was quite simple. One double decker unit could carry the passenger load of 5-6 PU jeepneys. From there, they pointed to the fact that the road space occupied by 5-6 jeepneys would be much longer than the length of a single double decker. The number of passenger vehicles running our streets would be smaller thereby addressing the traffic problem at the same time.

Furthermore, the focused group declared that with proportionately fewer double decker’s compared to PU jeepneys, the amount of imported fuel consumed would be reduced. It was their economic argument.

It is my opinion that the recommendations of the focused group looked effective to answer the traffic problems of long ago as well as of the present. What was apparent was that the measures were to balance the interest of all. The rich and the poor were to share the burden of the solutions offered. Unfortunately, when they presented their study, the immediate reaction of the president “these will make us lose in the election” sounded its death knell. Anugon!