BY RAFAEL R. GOMEZ
When President Arroyo signed into law the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) Act or Republic Act 9996 last month, not a few voices from government burst out in superlatives. Chief of them was Virgilio Leyretana, chair of the Mindanao Economic Development Council (Medco), which was being subsumed under the new MinDA. Leyretana called the occasion “a historic milestone” and “a landmark piece of legislation which will be a legacy of President Arroyo, as well as the Congress and the Senate, to Mindanao.”
BY RAFAEL R. GOMEZ
When President Arroyo signed into law the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) Act or Republic Act 9996 last month, not a few voices from government burst out in superlatives. Chief of them was Virgilio Leyretana, chair of the Mindanao Economic Development Council (Medco), which was being subsumed under the new MinDA. Leyretana called the occasion “a historic milestone” and “a landmark piece of legislation which will be a legacy of President Arroyo, as well as the Congress and the Senate, to Mindanao.”
Deputy House Speaker Simeon Datumanong echoed Leyretana’s eulogy when he observed that the president “has shown again her great concern for Mindanao when she signed into law MinDA and now we Mindanaons must support this agency.” Datumanong was among the original authors of the bill.
Replacing the Medco with the MinDA, the latter’s proponents say, can only be reasonable. For 50 years, Mindanao has been in search of a permanent body that would integrate all efforts at promoting growth within the island. In a press statement, Leyretana was quoted to have said that some 18 different bodies have been created in the past, all of which ultimately falling short of the task of pulling the island together.
Yet while a legislated MinDA may seem logical, what does it make of the Medco?
Modest gains
The Council and its secretariat were a brainchild of then President Ramos, who in 1992 fixed an eye on Mindanao and its economic development. It was Ramos, his presidential assistant Paul Dominguez, and Medco’s first executive director Femy Calderon who had the one-track drive to engage the entire island-community towards achieving modest economic gains.
By the end of Ramos’s term in 1996, the Medco was credited for having laid down the spadework for integrating the island through an arterial road network, and for opening its borders to the world through the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-the Philippines – East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA). A 15-year Development Framework Plan was likewise crafted “that details the vision, mission, strategy, and action plan for the island economy.”
Whatever new body that hopes to replace the latter clearly “has to take cognizance of Medco’s vast experience,” says Melot Balisalisa-Atillo, a longtime researcher and development activist in Mindanao.
Another layer
An analyst identified with the Ramos administration offers an even more candid view that “outside of ensuring that the officers and staff have secured a tenure of office and budget, there is no difference between this MinDA and MEDCo. Moreover, the relationship with the NEDA (National Economic Development Authority) regions is not well spelled. It becomes another layer in the bureaucracy.”
But Rep. Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro believes that the MinDA is more than just rhetoric. It was established “for the comprehensive, integrated, and faster development of Mindanao,” and “will not only bring in more funds and projects for Mindanao but will likewise serve as the engine of development of Mindanao as part of the BIMP-EAGA.”
Quite a mouthful in defense of an agency that has yet to take off, which stands in contrast to an essay written by Hernani de Leon, BusinessWorld bureau chief for Mindanao, at the time the MinDA was yet to be passed.
High-level support
“That Mindanao needs additional support from the National Government in terms of development intervention is a given. But whether the proposed Mindanao Economic Development Authority backed by Congress and the President would make a significant impact on the island’s development objectives once it goes operational is another thing,” wrote de Leon, who in the early 1980s served in the office of then Prime Minister Cesar E. A. Virata as a policy analyst.
He argues that Mindanao could have borrowed a leaf from successful coordinating bodies like the Tennessee Valley Authority in the US or what was then, in the late 1970s, the Cabinet Coordinating Committee on Integrated Rural Development which would later be converted into the National Council on Integrated Area Development. The latter assumed an oversight function, de Leon recalls, and “coordinated integrated area development programs funded in billions of pesos through official development assistance.”
Coordination and program coherence may be good, but without strong high-level support, Mindanao will remain in the backwoods. De Leon corroborates this by concluding that “if only the National Government pursued a sustainable and serious development program for southern Philippines decades ago, Mindanao would likely have the highest per capita income by now among the three island groups. Mindanao has the resources that could fuel the country’s economic growth at rates way above those posted in previous years.”
Just another extension
Such formidable resources will be squandered without a coherent and strategic plan carried out by a responsive body, is what de Leon is saying. This is followed up by an opinion by Tom Villarin, executive director of the sustainable integrated area development (SIAD) in Mindanao-Convergence for Asset Reform and Regional Development (SIMCARRD).
Villarin says that the MinDA “is just another extension of the central government. While its powers are broadened, it is not inclusive and negates the strategic role of provincial governments in an integrative Mindanao agenda.”
He suggests that a body similar to the Department of Mindanao and Sulu during the American colonial government be established instead. Such an entity, he explains, would put together the various functions of regional line agencies, have control over its own budget, and allocate monetary assistance to regions in dire need of resources.
Villarin believes that this body should serve the interests of the entire corps of Mindanao governors, who would exert oversight influence over the department secretary. ”It is only then that Mindanao’s integration as an island region can happen,” he says.
Rushed into law
Of course, all this may be academic, the MinDA bill apparently having been rushed into law before Congress went on its campaign recess, barely three months before Arroyo supposedly steps down from power.
(Informatively, the MinDA bill breezed through the legislative mills faster than the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee report on the $329 million national broadband network deal, which has remained pending. A groundbreaking reproductive health bill was shelved. And further deliberations on the Right of Reply bill, which would have imperiled press freedom, were postponed.)
Davao press secretary Alex Roldan, who spent 15 years in project management with the Philippine Business for Social Progress, concedes that although the MinDA is a fait accompli, “the most important is that we already have a body to plot the development of Mindanao.”
Fixed term
As for presidential adviser for Mindanao Jesus Dureza, who was just recently appointed MinDA chair by President Arroyo, Roldan says that “as a Mindanawan, I believe Sec. Dureza needs help” in terms of further defining a Mindanao vision and agenda. “He may not be perfect, and bahala na kon asa ang iyang bias ug kon kinsa ang naghimo niana (never mind where his bias lies or who’s responsible for it),” he says, as long as the MinDA is now in place.
But Villarin posits that “Dureza’s appointment as MinDA chair is another clear sign that GMA is not bent on giving up her powers.” He warns that the fixed term appointment of Dureza prevents the incoming president to revoke it, unless the MinDA Act is modified. Dureza sits in his new post for a six-year term.
Villarin observes that under his watch as the president’s point person in Mindanao, Dureza “presided over a peace process that was rejected by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.” He also cited allegations about Dureza’s tiff with tribal chiefs along the Davao-Bukidnon border, and about his handling of the Ampatuan massacre which was “seen to be largely accommodating to the alleged perpetrators.”
Villarin describes Dureza’s tour of duty as cabinet secretary as “lackluster,” a performance that “should not qualify him for the (MinDA) job. He would definitely not enjoy the graces of a new president who wants to start clean. This will not augur well for MinDA.”
Political will
Still and all, Gus Miclat, who runs the solidarity institution Initiatives for International Dialogue, waxes optimistic over prospects of the MinDA, as well as those of Dureza.
“With a fixed tenure and mandate, perhaps Jess will be less saddled and cobbled by the pressures and expectations of interests inimical to Mindanao and provide the high-level political will to assert in policy circles what is rightfully due us,” says Miclat, a onetime press colleague of Dureza.
And that—political will—more than vigor or even vision, may be what matters most at the end of the day.
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