Neg Or back to CV
President Rodrigo Duterte has signed Executive Order Order (EO) No. 38 that revokes former president Noynoy Aquino’s EO No. 138 that severed the province of Negros Oriental from Central Visayas (Region 7) and created the Negros Island Region (NIR). While lack of funds for the NIR has been cited as reason for the revocation, I think the more compelling reason is the Duterte administration’s push for federalism. Regional groupings would change, anyway, in a federal setup.
This would mean that Negros Oriental will join again Cebu, Bohol and Siquijor as part of Region 7. Also, since the offices created for the NIR would already be dissolved, the employees in those offices will go back to their previous posting. The adjustment, though, wouldn’t be difficult because Neg Or had “been there, done that,” sort of. It will be merely coming back to Central Visayas.
From the beginning, though, I was ambivalent about the NIR. While I see the advantage of linking up two local government units (LGUs) located in one island, there were characteristics specific to the Negros situation. Negros Oriental, for example, primarily speaks Cebuano and it’s not that their major urban centers are near each other (Neg Or’s Dumaguete City, for example, is facing Cebu island, while Negros Occidental’s Bacolod City is on the other side).
Besides, Neg Or had been part of Central Visayas for decades, which means that the setup had solidified. Neg Or’s linkage to Cebu is already well-established, although its officials complained at times about Central Visayas having in its midst an “Imperial Cebu” (a take on “Imperial Manila”).
“The establishment of regional offices (ROs) of departments and agencies in the NIR requires substantial appropriation to be fully operational, thus competing with government priority programs and projects for funding,” the EO noted. This was precisely what Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno complained last year. He said then: “When we came in, I was confronted with a P19-billion request by various agencies for that new region. I said, that’s not affordable, we have other priorities.”
But I think funding would not have been an issue had the Duterte administration not been thinking of dividing the country into federal states. This obviously comes with the policy of maintaining the status quo in the meantime. Indeed, why fund the creation of the NIR when the same NIR may yet be dissolved once federalism is approved. By the same token, when the Aquino administration created the NIR, it was because it wasn’t pushing for federalism.
That does not mean the NIR’s dissolution does not also come with a cost. Time and money were spent in the creation of the said region. Aquino signed EO No. 138 on May 29, 2015 or one year before President Duterte assumed his post and more than two years before EO No. 38 was signed. Government spent money for the duration of NIR’s existence and will be spending for it until the region is fully dissolved.
As I said in a previous column, there should be continuity of programs and projects even if administrations change. The “laban o bawi” style is certainly bad governance.