AT around the time this series began running in the Manila Times, there was a false alarm about the health of the former first lady, Imelda Romualdez Marcos. The anxious reaction of the public while awaiting word about her condition proved how she still matters and can elicit various reactions among the people.

During Imelda’s time as governor of Metropolitan Manila from 1975 to 1986, since she was the second half of the conjugal dictatorship, her technocrats in the Metropolitan Manila Commission were able to implement initiatives which would be beneficial to the Metro but would be unpopular among the mayors of the local government units — the Metro Manila Land Use Plan and the Capital Investment Folio (CIF, not portfolio as rendered in last week’s column), which basically managed the lands and resources of Metro Manila with a metropolitan perspective rather than a parochial one for each unit.

Some innovations may have been small, but they mattered a lot. Mrs. Marcos at first said that she wanted to remove all the vendors at Plaza Miranda, but then realized that the space was actually a very good place for people to have their livelihood. So, according to Nathaniel von Einsiedel, the commissioner for planning of Metro Manila, Imelda told them, “Imbes na magkanya-kanya sila ng banig sa kalye, mga stall… i-standardize natin ‘yung stalls.”

But one problem was that parts of Plaza Miranda belonged to Quiapo Church and they never wanted permanent structures then. Despite receiving this report, Mrs. Marcos insisted, “E hindi. Puwede ‘yan! Hanapan mo ng paraan.” According to Einsiedel, “I was caught between the Church and Mrs. Marcos … and this is one of the things that I owe Mrs. Marcos. It sharpened my resourcefulness . ... I designed stalls with wheels, so that, ‘pag sinabi ng Church na, I was hoping na mane-negotiate namin ‘yung oras, and that at a certain time, wala ‘yung stalls dun. So, kung natitiklop mo ‘yan at may gulong, puwede mong igulong sa tabi.”

Despite the MMC being a beautiful idea, eventually Einsiedel realized that it would only need a few people to coordinate what needed to be done in the Metro and by that time, there were redundant functions being done already by the LGUs. Also, despite some ad hoc projects already being completed, the people hired were retained which transformed the MMC into a bloated bureaucracy. He also felt that Mrs. Marcos would not be around forever to facilitate easily the reforms they wanted to pursue. And so he wrote these sentiments to Mrs. Marcos, hoping he would be heard. According to Ignacio Bunye regarding the moves of Einsiedel: “He correctly observed that the commission was created with correct intentions but was being run for the wrong reasons, i.e., the selfish ends of the Marcoses.”

But that letter was intercepted by another MMC official and was not delivered to the first lady. Irritated, Einsiedel leaked the letter to the opposition so action could be taken. His enemies saw this opportunity to file a case against him in the Sandiganbayan to hassle him. He filed a letter of resignation with Mrs. Marcos, but she asked him not to step down yet until the coffee table book for their 10th anniversary had been written. Unfortunately, when the book Metropolitan Manila: Towards the City of Man was finished, it was already November 1985, and everyone’s focus was on the announced snap presidential elections, which was the spark which triggered the events of the People Power Revolution which would lead to the fall of the Marcos regime in February 1986.

When President Corazon Aquino assumed office, she asked most Marcos appointees to vacate their posts, Einsiedel was one of those who were asked to stay a few more years. She told Eisiedel in Malacañang: “You don’t need to resign.

We want you to stay and we want you to help.” And Cory Aquino took out the position paper that he had handed previously to Mrs. Marcos. Until now, he never learned how it reached PCCA, but it became the basic document of the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) in creating the executive order transforming the MMC to become the Metropolitan Manila Authority, or the MMA, which subsequently became the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).

Unfortunately, some of the better projects like the Parañaque Spillway were abandoned due to the subsequent demarcosification.

In nuancing its history and in weighing the achievements and faults of the Marcos regime, let us remember that it was not only the Marcoses who ran the government. It would be simplistic to just blame them for command responsibility. We should take into account that whatever good or bad was done was made possible by a lot of people, like Nathaniel von Einsiedel, the technocrat who had a positive impact on what made the Metropolitan Manila government one of the few better original ideas of the Marcos regime.