AS governor of Metropolitan Manila from 1975 to 1986, first lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos may have had grandiose ideas, but the role of the technocrats was to translate them into doable projects which accounted for some of the good ideas which came out of the regime.

Even until 2004, Mrs. Marcos told us in an interview, “The problem of the world is not resources, it is distribution,” and so since the Philippines in her map is in the center of the world, she wanted an underground tunnel from Infanta, Quezon to Manila Bay to connect the Pacific Ocean to the South China Sea, “Lahat ng kayamanan ng West dadaan dito papuntang East. Lahat ng kayamanan ng East papunta sa West, dadaan dito. Atin lahat; todos los santos.”

To connect the East and West in Metro Manila through an underground tunnel where all the goods will pass? Nathaniel von Einsiedel, known to people as Dinky, was commissioner for planning of the capital region’s governing body at the time, the Metropolitan Manila Commission (MMC). He confirmed to me that the weird tunnel was actually planned to be a road network that seemed to be underground because it would pass through several mountains. This was also confirmed to me in an interview with Imelda’s vice governor, Mel Mathay. This is part of the plan reflected in some of the publications of the MMC which was to expand Metro Manila to Quezon province so that it can become a city facing two major bodies of water — the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.

This and other planned initiatives of the MMC like the Parañaque Spillway which might have helped in lessening the flooding in the metro, were unfortunately discontinued after EDSA.

Einsiedel said: “Well, hindi namin siya (Imelda) basta-basta binablangko e. Parang sasakay ka kapag meron siyang mga bagong ideyang ganun.” But, he said, if there were no direct instructions, he would wait for her to say it three times before acting on the idea. Then the team would start to conceptualize, create terms of reference and apply for international grants. JICA, for example, approved a grant for the road to Infanta, but proposed projects which were too “up in the sky” might be rejected. Mrs. Marcos, for example, wanted to have a reclamation project from the CCP Complex to Bulacan, which would block the outlet of the Candaba Swamp in the Pampanga River delta. When she was shown the challenges it would face, she stopped mentioning it in public.

Einsiedel took the opportunity of Mrs. Marcos’s enthusiasm and power, which was almost like that of President Ferdinand E. Marcos at the time, to push for initiatives that would be unpopular to the mayors. For Dinky, the two most important systemic innovations undertaken were the Metro Manila Land Use Plan and Zoning Ordinance and the Capital Investment Portfolio.

The land use plan centralizes the zoning of the existing residential, industrial and commercial. But he thought, “E, martial law at that time. Although I discovered