MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
First chance I got close enough to chat with the 6’ 4”-tall San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora without standing on a chair, I asked, “How tall is Mrs. Zamora?”
“Five-six,” he replied. “And my mom is five-eight.”
Mayor Zamora has a new reason to be someone to look up to, at least in Metro Manila. Newly elected by the 16 other mayors of Metro Manila to be their first among equals, he’s as good as governor of the National Capital Region. Going by the model established by the original Metro Manila Authority under then first lady Imelda R. Marcos as its governor, the raison d’etre for an MMDA is to integrate the 17 cities into a more or less seamless whole, just look at EDSA: one highway, multiple boundaries. One chairman, but another guy calls the shots.
Speaking of Mrs. Marcos, it was President FM’s executive secretary or little president, a certain Rony Zamora, who is Francis’ father.
That the head of the Metro Manila Council is the leader of a city of 136,400 compared with the millions who populate Manila and Quezon City speaks volumes of his fellow mayors’ confidence factor. What do the mayors and their constituents expect Chairman Zamora to do? I’m not a citizen of the heart-shaped city of San Juan, but I am often in Greenhills, where my alma mater is located and it’s the site of the conveniently designed Unimart shopping complex.
Neither Immaculate Conception Academy nor Unimart is Zamora’s achievement, but according to friends who live in San Juan, crime continues to be low, their streets are better than others’, the vaccine rollout did not suffer major hitches, and the mayor takes care of their senior citizens. Recently, he gathered residents aged 70 and up to give them cash gifts ahead of their 100th birthday. As one of them said, “What good is P100,000 when you’re that old? Centenarians won’t enjoy the cash, and younger members of their family will surely fight over it.”
What lies ahead for MMDA? With worsening traffic, now or later; the daily agony of commuting; congestion, homelessness; no room for more parks, hospitals, schools; the high cost of living, etc. Is the future a livable one? As Metro Manila goes . . .