The latest caper of Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte is a classroom case on how political dynasties undermine accountability and bestow a misplaced sense of entitlement among heirs to the family throne.
Duterte succeeded his father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, and sister, now Vice President Sara Duterte, to the post where they served 22 and nine years, respectively. His brother, Paolo Duterte, was Davao City vice mayor before he became a House representative along with two other Duterte relatives.
The Dutertes’ iron grip on local governance has apparently emboldened Mayor Duterte to openly defy the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) when it suspended the operations of the city’s sanitary landfill so it could conduct stabilization measures on the collapsed facility. The landfill, which used to receive the city’s 750 tons of solid waste daily gave way on May 20, burying 15 houses that resulted in two deaths and several injuries.
Instead of allowing the DENR to do its job, the mayor directed his constituents to dump their garbage in front of the DENR Region XI office, “so [the agency] can personally appreciate the volume of garbage that accumulates when an essential public service is halted indefinitely.”
Public safety
The DENR had described its landfill suspension order as a technical decision meant to secure retrieval operations, allow geotechnical assessments and protect workers and nearby communities.
“Safety remains the foremost consideration,” pointed out Alnulfo Alvarez, regional director of the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB). “We recognize the operational pressure the city is facing, but we cannot compromise public safety and environmental protection,” he added.
Duterte’s directive on making the DENR a garbage collection point violated Republic Act No. 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, which prohibits littering and illegal dumping, noted EMB Director Michael Drake Matias. It also “undermines the very principles of ecological solid waste management,” he said. “Our focus must remain on protecting lives, rehabilitating the landfill, and ensuring compliance with environmental standards,” Matias pointed out.
According to the EMB, it put in place corrective measures such as slope stabilization, drainage controls, and stricter safety protocols, and presented the local government unit (LGU) other options to manage its waste. These include coordination with neighboring LGUs, fast-tracking the use of a new sanitary landfill, and setting up a temporary disposal area within the current site, subject to engineering interventions.
A win-win situation
Instead of working it out with DENR however, Mayor Duterte chose to butt heads with the agency, using threat and intimidation like his father did, to squash opposition.
Whether or not such belligerence hastened its decision, the DENR on Friday ordered the permanent closure of the old sanitary landfill, saying that a new garbage disposal site has become available. No further dumping operations would be allowed at the existing landfill, the agency added.
In the meantime, the city government has been given 30 days to submit a safe closure and rehabilitation plan for the old landfill, with the DENR monitoring the plan “to ensure long-term public safety and environmental sustainability.”
The DENR decision may be a win-win situation for city residents who finally have a dumping site for solid waste, hopefully with the assurance that a similar trash slide won’t be happening again soon.
But for Mayor Duterte, the incident underscores his severe lack of governance skills and a dangerous temperament prone to settling scores rather than seeking solutions. His irresponsible and reckless order not only exposed the city to more solid waste festering on the streets; it also broke down what could have been a constructive partnership between the national and local governments. His authoritarian attitude reflects a contempt for the law as well and a toxic disrespect for those tasked to uphold it.
Political lineage
On June 9, Malacañang press officer Claire Castro said the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) would conduct a “thorough investigation” into Duterte’s earlier remark directing uncollected garbage to the DENR office, to determine whether Duterte or Davao City officials committed negligence or breached environmental laws.
And rightly so. Both the DENR and the DILG must move to sanction this city executive who apparently puts his ego before the welfare of his constituents.
As that Davao City nongovernment group Interfacing Development Interventions for Sustainability (Idis) noted, the landfill tragedy “exposed deep, long-standing failures in the city’s waste management system.”
And most definitely, a more sober and conscientious leader whose worth is defined less by his political lineage and, as Idis noted, more by the city’s “clean streets, functional systems and resilient communities.”