The opposite of gerrymandering

Ike Señeres

BELIEVE it or not, there is no antonym for gerrymandering in the dictionary. Perhaps that’s simply because it does not ever happen. When political boundaries are gerrymandered to create new sets of positions for political reasons, the reverse never ever happens. Having said that twice, I will still say that something else happens, and it seems that it is only happening in the Philippines. For now, I will only cite two examples, but I am almost sure that there are other examples that may have already happened in the past, or may possibly happen in the future.

My first example is the case of the former Davao province. It started as one province many years ago until it was gerrymandered to become Compostela Valley, Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, Davao Oriental and Davao Occidental. As it is now, what used to be one province that was governed by one Governor and one Provincial Board has now become five provinces that are governed by five governors and five Provincial Boards. Perhaps not by coincidence, what used to be one province has now become one region, with the same name as it used to have as a province. My second example is the former Cotabato Province that has since been gerrymandered to become North Cotabato, South Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat. Just the same, what used to be one province that was governed by one Governor has now become four provinces that are governed by four Governor and four Provincial Boards. As it is now, it has become one region with the same name as it used to have as a province. Adding to the confusion, the name of North Cotabato was reverted back to the old name of simply Cotabato.

Needless to say, each of the gerrymandered provinces would have at least one congressman, depending on the size of their voting populations. One thing is clear however, the Davao Region and the Cotabato Region are now supposed to have their own Regional Development Councils (RDCs). That is the upside, because the development agendas of the provinces within these regions could now be coordinated within their own RDCs. The downside however, that would sound more like sour grapes, is that the development agendas of these provinces could have just been simply coordinated as one province as they originally were, sans the gerrymandering. Setting aside the sour grapes, their development agendas could still be coordinated within the RDCs, if only they would faithfully institutionalize their RDCs as they are supposed to.

By its very nature, all gerrymandering actions are politically motivated and there is not much that we could do about that, because these actions are backed by acts of Congress. Notwithstanding the political boundaries that were defined by Congress however, the fact remains that these regions still actually belong to the same natural ecosystems that have been there long before Congress was created, and there is nothing that the Congress could do about that. Even if the political boundaries have been changed by Congress, the geography within and around these regions are still the same, and they are still affected by the same weather patterns collectively or separately, as the case may be. That being the case, the RDCs of these regions have to logical choice but to plan and manage their common ecosystems as if they are one jurisdiction, for example in the case of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).

Based on the laws of economics, the bigger a project is, the better its economies of scale would be. Although I am an advocate of subsidiarity, I would still say that there are many infrastructure projects that would be more efficiently planned and implemented regionally, again because of the economies of scale. Examples of these would be renewable energy generation projects. This reasoning would also apply to water generation and filtration projects, particularly when several provinces are actually sharing the same water sources such as watersheds, lakes and rivers. Pollution control is also one possible area of cooperation, because it could actually happen that the solid wastes or the polluted air of one province would also spill over and affect their neighboring provinces.

Although “One Town One Product” (Otop) would actually sound like a good idea at the outset, this approach would usually not be practical in terms of achieving the best economies of scale. Considering that achieving good economies of scale is actually a numbers game, it might be better to have one principal product per region, in order to add up the numbers. Please note that the operative word here is “principal” because it goes without saying that each region should have a mix of many products, with a principal product leading it. One practical application of the economies of scale is to have post harvest facilities that would service entire regions and not just one or more separate municipalities.

Going beyond the political jurisdictions of provinces and the combined development planning of the RDCs, the regions should actually go beyond what meets the eye where they are, because there are many opportunities in emerging growth corridors that would encompass at least two regions. For instance, the reach of the highways from the Davao Region to the Caraga Region could actually become the Eastern Mindanao Growth (EMG) Corridor, perhaps sooner or later. If only these regions could start thinking out of the box, this EMG Corridor could actually be interconnected with a bullet train that would only stop in major cities from end to end. To make this doable, the national government could spend for the bullet trains, while the provinces could spend for the train stations. Not having old trains is actually an opportunity to go directly to bullet trains, as many countries have already done.

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