A wish list and measure of President’s polestar

I SHARE Former Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban’s insight and hope regarding President Aquino’s polestar—Executive Order 43, which would essentially “translate [his] Social Contract into efficient, effective and responsible actions”—the summum bonum (highest good) as any and all leaders’ onus.

As the President’s team has begun to buckle down to work, I’d like to recite a very simple prayer, or an ordinary wish list of sorts, so that he may fulfill the contract, even if only step by step.

1. May government realize that public transportation costs eat up a sizable chunk of the income of a minimum wage earner because of the system’s inefficiency. Government should be able to recover as incremental public income the wasted resources of unused seats in buses, jeepneys, taxis, tricycles and all other public transportation, on whose gross inefficiency the official regulated fare is pegged.

As it should find out that the system’s unit of input that is divided into the number of passengers, plus a reasonable margin, should amount to about 70 percent less than the current fare. May government find the wisdom to confront the challenge of beneficially reversing the data that say 80 percent of the vehicles on the road are private and 20 percent public, while the average ridership of the former is only one and one-half persons.

And as efficiency in public transportation may have to mean comfort, safety, predictability and no underutilized seats, may government find the most apt policy to encourage the greater number of passengers on board private vehicles to take the “New Public Transportation System” that is sustainable and ecologically correct and essentially based on the summum bonum. Those who have less in wheels must have more in public roads!

2. May government also realize that the national budget consists mostly of expenditure for operating bureaucracy which, when scrutinized to the minutest detail, could save precious public funds, particularly in the operations of government vehicles.

As it should be able to establish, again, that a unit of input (gas) into the system should equal the distance travelled per state employee. May government therefore find the wisdom to realize its mandate to maximize the system as efficiently as possible and lead—as CJ Panganiban said—by example.

And as these wishes do not require rocket science to realize, they are my simplest measure of the President’s polestar.

—RENE D. PINEDA JR., president,

Citizens’ Organizations Concerned with Advocating Philippine Environmental Sustainability (COCAP) and president,

Partnership for Clean Air (PCA)

11-63 Venice St., Maia Alta Subd.,

Dalig, Antipolo City