ONE of the noteworthy projects — and not in a good way — of the late-stage Duterte administration was the installation, at a cost of well over P150 million and counting, of an artificial beach made of dolomite gravel along a stretch of Manila’s Baywalk parallel to Roxas Boulevard. The dolomite beach, which has the appearance and texture of cat litter, was roundly criticized at the time for a number of reasons, some of which were clearly valid. The Duterte administration, for its part, defended the beach as illustrative of its larger Manila Bay rehabilitation efforts, and as being “good for the people’s mental health.”

My own impression was that a purely aesthetic upgrade is not necessarily a bad thing, but that the timing of the investment in it was irresponsible; at the time, the administration was already pleading poverty with respect to carrying out pandemic response measures. It also seemed that the government may have underestimated how much the beach would actually cost. A bit of research into beach engineering indicated that creating one is not that difficult, but that keeping it intact and in place requires expensive continuous effort. For all that, however, the beach project seemed largely harmless; a bit dubious, perhaps, but probably not likely to cause any real harm.

Unfortunately, that assessment was apparently wrong. Last Friday evening, the city was subjected to a couple of hours of heavy rain. This caused spot flooding in a number of areas, which is not an unusual occurrence. What was unusual, however, was the heavy flooding in Manila on the major streets running roughly parallel to the dolomite beach — Roxas Boulevard and Taft Avenue — and their cross-streets between Kalaw Avenue and Quirino Avenue This area is not immune to occasional street flooding, but the flooding last Friday was excessive, more typical of a strong tropical storm than just average summer monsoon rains.

Despite the flood and its resulting disruption being a popular topic of conversation in conventional and social media, nobody from the government had anything to say about it until Tuesday, when the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) released a statement blaming the construction of the dolomite beach for the deluge. Or more specifically, the failure of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to complete three pumping stations that would divert all that water to a treatment facility before discharging it into the bay. With those unavailable, the only outlet for the flood water was a pumping station that discharges into the Pasig River, which couldn’t handle the volume filling the streets.

That led to a lot of “I told you so’s” being expressed on social media; it seemed that most people’s worries that the dolomite beach was not just unnecessary but potentially harmful had been confirmed. The MMDA, however, issued a follow-up statement a few hours after the first to partly walk back their earlier statement; the beach had nothing to do with the flooding, the MMDA said, only the missing pumping stations.

Not many people are buying the revised explanation, and they shouldn’t. The dolomite beach is the cause of the flooding. The realignment of the stormwater pumping stations, as a component project of the larger Manila Bay rehabilitation, would have been done at some point, beach or no beach. If the beach were not there, however, those three stations would have been built while the existing drainage system — albeit one in serious need of an upgrade — was still functioning, thus minimizing, if not eliminating, the flooding problem. Installing the beach which has no drainage function, as most of it has a concrete base, anyway — undid the old system, and left no drainage at all in that area until the new system is completed. The DPWH, whose priorities and sense of urgency over the past three years seem to have been limited to “projects that will make (now former) Secretary Mark Villar look good for his Senate campaign,” dragged its heels and didn’t coordinate with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on the beach project, leading to the current mess.

There should be consequences for this, but, of course, there won’t be; overlooking or even rewarding bad faith is the rule rather than the exception in government here.

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The interpersonal drama that has erupted over the leadership of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) is an embarrassment. It is not a good look for potential or existing investors, and something President Bongbong Marcos Jr. should have intervened — as he has the absolute authority to do — to resolve already.

The squabble is the result of Duterte-era PEZA director Charito Plaza’s refusing to abide by the blanket directive — the first executive order issued by the new president, as a matter of fact — for all of the previous administration’s appointees to vacate their positions, unless otherwise directed to remain in a holdover capacity, which she was not. Without going into all the mind-numbing legal details, Plaza has argued a different interpretation of the terms of her employment at PEZA that exempts her from the order to leave, and so has not accepted being temporarily replaced by her former deputy.

Not surprisingly, that has led to the sort of banana-republic shenanigans that often happen when an unwilling official is told to surrender his or her position — people being locked out of offices, carrying out an argument by way of overdramatic statements to the media, and so on.

Although Plaza had a reasonably good record in her tenure at PEZA and has been endorsed for retention by a number of business groups, it inevitably raises suspicions when any official is so aggressive in efforts to remain in office when all circumstances indicate that he or she should not. It does not necessarily mean there is some wrongdoing afoot, but it is an indication that an individual considers himself or herself more important than the system, which is a personality trait that has no place in government at any level.

It is up to President Marcos to decide if Plaza’s recalcitrance is enough to disqualify her from being retained in her position, but apart from that, if she can be convinced to dial the ego down a couple of notches, she would not really be a bad choice; particularly given the difficulty the president seems to be having in filling some key jobs. Plaza has done creditable work, has the backing of some business groups, and there is something to be said for continuity, unless a major policy shift is planned. Whatever his decision, President Marcos should make it quickly; the squabble over the PEZA leadership is a problem that the country doesn’t need to have, and it simply makes him look like he does not have a firm grip on his own bureaucracy.