I’d rather be Mayor of Manila than President of the Philippines, be king of the hill than tenant of Malacañang.

Apparently I’m in the minority. Just look: a dozen presidential candidates and only three who would be mayor of Manila, none of them female!

For the longest time I’ve entertained the notion that if anyone can cure the capital city of its generic, generational ills, from poverty to petty or violent crime, corruption to tax evasion, traffic to homelessness, that person can and should be president. Recently, however, realizing the enormity of the problem, I’ve lowered my standards to vote for any presidential candidate who would promise to solve the perennial problem of traffic predictable and unpredictable everywhere in the megapolis of Metro Manila and other highly urbanized cities.

Traffic management is not forcing cars to disappear, it entails logic and logistics, organizational skills and planning (creation of roads, buildings and open spaces), integrity and honesty in awarding contracts for construction, maintenance and repair of streets, traffic lights, signs, etc. Simply stated, a manager who can meet the criteria and overcome obstacles financial, technical, and personal deserves to be leader.

But now that I’ve lowered the bar, I’m willing to vote for any candidate with a one-word platform: beautification! One and only one, top priority: Give us back our beautiful country! Will the candidate find a way to clean up the ugliest and grimiest buildings, paint the overpasses and their underbellies, build streets and keep them nice and clean, untangle overhead wires, diminish the import and impact, ugh, of the billboard jungle, remove the clutter of seasonal-to-permanent streamers and tarps of politicians, plant trees without letup and restore capital punishment to tree killers, replace the stink of city life with a breath of fresh air fit for a baby’s lungs.

Too simple an agenda for president? Then why hasn’t anyone done it, or tried to do it?

So far, no one on the horizon has come out to declare a policy of replacing broken windows (the way New York Mayor Giulianni did, in the process dramatically reducing the incidence of crime) and beautifying our towns and cities as an unusual but practical antidote to sloth, crime and grime.

MMDA chairman Bayani Fernando has the right idea, but even his own party doubts him. Which ought to say something about how ugly politics has become.