Three days after President Macapagal-Arroyo signed the executive order creating a reconstruction commission, and two days after she announced its existence, the EO remains unnumbered and unreleased. All the general public has to go by is the series of announcements from Malacañang.

We understand the sense of urgency that must have animated the early disclosure. The epic scale of the devastation wrought by “Ondoy” and “Pepeng” grows bigger, and more stark, with each day’s passing. But the laundry list of responsibilities assigned to the Special National Public-Private Reconstruction Commission, to use its full name, strikes us as overly broad, amorphous even.

We reiterate our stance that a joint undertaking of the government and the private sector only blurs accountabilities, and that it may be best for private sector leaders to join government representatives in a fact-finding commission instead.

But even given the reconstruction commission’s own announced objectives, there seems to be considerable overlap with the functions of other government institutions.

To quote from the official line—quite literally, the phrasing recurring in the announcement of the Office of the Press Secretary and in the release of the Philippine Information Agency—the commission will “study the causes of the weather abnormalities, what actions to take to prepare the country and the cost such actions will entail.”

Efforts are already underway to “study the causes of the weather abnormalities.” The Senate committee on climate change, for instance, has already started its inquiry. How will the commission’s work differ from that already in process?

Also, the transparent idea behind this particular cluster of objectives is to help make the case for the Philippines as a victim of climate change, the premise behind the reconstruction commission’s funding program. (Presidential adviser and Albay Gov. Joey Salceda has made the point, and President Arroyo has echoed it, that a victim of climate change should not be punished—say with commercial lending rates at a time of crisis—but helped instead.) There is much to be said for this line of argument—but does the first set of objectives include determining the actual conditions that led to the great floods? This particular fact-finding work seems to us to be of paramount importance, especially as the definition of the problem defines the billion-peso solutions. But this part of the work seems to be missing, lost in the general amorphousness.

The commission’s second set of objectives has been announced as follows: “It will also undertake the rehabilitation plan for wrecked infrastructure and other priorities; prioritize programs as well as oversee implementation of these programs.”

As the exemplary case of the Marikina City cleanup demonstrates (as contrasted, say, with the case in Pasig City), a lot can happen, and happen fast, if the national government throws its resources behind a solution. But to choose which of the many areas needing rehabilitation to prioritize is not only a management decision, backed by the best available information; it is also a political act of will.

Will the public-private commission have the political mandate to make the tough decisions?

The third set of objectives is the one by which the commission is already known to the public: It will “also raise funds, especially grants, to fund reconstruction. It will also serve as a clearing house for international assistance implemented by donors themselves using the cluster approach.”

We can understand the necessity of putting the country’s best foot forward in dealing with the international community, hence, the premium Malacañang has placed on the diplomatic coup, as it were, of persuading businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan to serve as the commission’s chair. But again, the commission’s amorphous mandate raises questions. For instance, won’t the necessarily political decision-making involved in meeting the second cluster of objectives (the rehabilitation plan) affect the commission’s ability to raise funds abroad?

In sum, the reconstruction commission seems to be weighed down by the responsibilities that ought to devolve on the President herself. That she needs to create a commission to discharge the work is one more proof, the final evidence, that she is the principal victim of her own crisis of legitimacy.