Duterte forms committee to organize papal visit and world youth day

The national committee is tasked with ensuring the smooth visit of Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in January 2023

About 3 months before the expected visit of Pope Francis to the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte formed a national organizing committee to ensure the smooth flow of his visit.

In a memorandum released Friday, October 6, Duterte called for the creation of the Papal Visit and World Youth Day 2023-National Organizing Committee (PV-NOC) to coordinate preparations. The Committee is chaired by Executive Secretary Salvador C. Medialdea and vice-chaired by Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano.

Other members include:

• Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana
• Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Ano
• Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar
• Health Secretary Dr. Francisco Duque III
• Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade
• Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo
• Presidential Communications Operations Office
• Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff
• Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chairman Danilo Lim
• National Youth Commission Chairman Cariza Seguerra

On Wednesday, Duterte also announced that the Filipino peacekeepers, who successfully escaped a standoff with Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights, have been tasked to secure the Pope.

“As instructed by President Duterte, all heads of the different government departments, local governments as well as the private sectors are encouraged to participate and coordinate all efforts to make sure that the visit of His Holiness in our country next year will be well organized and peaceful,” Medialdea said in a statement.

Among the duties of the committee are ensuring cooperation between public and private sectors, particularly with the central committee of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP); peace and order; and traffic management.

The memorandum, effective immediately, also established two local executive committees – one in Manila and another in Leyte – where the Pope is expected to visit. The local committees will “serve as the on-site full-time, day-to-day operations arms of the PV-WYD-NOC,” said the statement.

Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will be making a stop in Leyte to visit disaster-hit victims. Their visit comes nine years after Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) killed more than 6,000 people, mostly in Tacloban City in Eastern Visayas.

This will mark the first time in 3 decades – only the second time ever – for a pope to go beyond the Philippine capital, Manila, as the first Latin American pontiff vows to reach out to the world's “peripheries.” 

The Pope is expected to visit the Philippines on January 12 to 16, 2023. His trip will be the first by a Pope since Pope John Paul II's visit in 1995 and himself in 2015. 

Nagrenew ng kontrata ang ABS-CBN, kaya di magsasara yan sa 2020.

A provincial’s hope for the ‘dead city’

There are many who reacted negatively to statements calling Metro Manila a “dead city.” This description may not exactly be inaccurate, and reflect the opinion of many experts over the last decades, making it tough to dispute.

This also forces us to face obvious truths that Metro Manilans can no longer deny, and consider suggestions we once thought were not possible.

As a non-resident, outsider and frequent visitor, I offer the observations from the outside looking in that residents may not realize:

Traffic has defined the daily life of Metro Manilans. Studies say it has slowed to about 30 km per hour, the once-hour long journey to traverse a 15km distance is now a three-hour grind.

Thus, visitors like us can only manage one appointment per half day when we could previously handle two to three to maximize our stay. We now need to spend longer days in the metro to get the same amount of work or business done, transacting with partners and/or government officials that previously liked to concentrate processes and decisions to higher echelons in Manila.

Add to that the higher cost of food and accomodations compared with where we come from, and the transaction costs when dealing with Metro Manila can drain meager pockets.

While these are costs business people can bear, woe to those seeking medical treatment in Metro Manila’s big hospitals. They need to wade through this traffic for doctors appointments and medical tests and procedures.

To be sure, sitting in traffic isn’t relaxing as other studies like that of JICA in 2015 claim a daily loss of 2.4 billion pesos a day to traffic alone. The staggering cost represents externalities that past governments failed to manage while pushing high economic growth targets.

All of these make a visit to Metro Manila a necessary pain we in the provinces have to bear, as a lot of what we need to do was concentrated in Metro manila.

Hopes for opening up the Metro

But recent events represent hopes for many of us and may help ease Metro Manila in the process.

For one, the announcement of a government satellite system and Internet backbone will do well to make online transactions easier and faster. This dovetails with recent announcements to speed up permit acquisitions and do them through online systems, negating the need to go to Metro Manila just to transact. This is a relief for many of us, easing the work of doing business.

At the same time, this lets also allows many business process outsourcing companies and home based workers to obtain livelihoods online, removing the need to travel to and from offices.

Second, the re-emphasis on rail systems with the MRT-LRT common station, the Mega Manila subway, and the MRT-7, LRT-1 Cavite and LRT-2 East extensions will allow suburban dwellers from Mega Manila to go to and from the Metro easily on a daily basis, removing the need for them to rent bed spaces and apartments in the business districts. this also tempers runaway speculation that jacks up Metro property prices to a level beyond the reach of most people.

This also allows us from the provinces to travel within Metro Manila more seamlessly, lessening our dependence on taxis and more expensive TNVs systems like Grab and Uber that in recent experience has not exactly delivered as well on their promises of a hassle-free experience as the wait for booking on these apps has grown longer. With a better light rail system, we’d rather get on a train as many of us do in Singapore or Hong Kong.

Third, the coming of government heart and kidney centers in Cagayan de Oro and Davao already under construction, and heightened specialty medical services in places like iloilo and Bacolod give many of us the opportunity to obtain speciaity services and advanced facilities we could only avail of in Manila. this lowers the cost of specialty care, and lessens our need to fly to the Metro for this care.

Government investment in this type of health care encourages specialists to relocate from Metro Manila to these cities, spurring the investment of other private medical establishments like St. Luke’s in Davao, for instance.

Deconcentrating the Metro will decongest and revive it

In these three examples, we see the possibility of reviving the dead city by investing wisely in things that will allow the rest of the country to build their own capabilites and partake of the processes that were once exclusive to Metro Manila. This also encourages private investment to move into the provinces, creating employment and income opportunities in a manner that reduces the over all cost of doing business.

This deconcentrates power and decongests its corridors that only a few of us from elsewhere in the archipelago can pass through.In the process, the metro will begin to breathe again.

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