Where else should it start?
           
As the main agenda setter and chief executive authority, it is only proper for -- and expected of -- the Office of the President to begin the dirty task of cleaning up her own backyard -- her stretch of the stinking and heavily- silted Pasig River.
       
Indeed, it is not impossible to clean up a dead or dying waterway or vast body of water.
   
This has been done in Singapore where treated river water is now bottled and sold, the same with Chao Phraya in Thailand, and even Tokyo Bay in Japan.
   
And so when President Arroyo announces her full commitment to a massive river clean-up, it doesn’t merit an outpouring of accolades or public praise. She just needs to see to it that it gets done. Period.
         
With just about six months to do the job, she has to work double time to make this effort a part of her crowning glory by agreeing to clean up her own backyard first before the government removes all the other obstructions along the Pasig River, she begins the Herculean task to stop the perennial flooding in Metro Manila.
   
But this only after the back-to-back devastation of ‘‘Ondoy’’ and ‘‘Pepeng.’’  So much for forward-looking public service.
   
Urban planner and architect Felino Palafox,  Jr. said two buildings in the Malacañang compound which backs  up to the Pasig were in violation of the 10-meter easement rule for riverfront properties.
   
“I brought this up when I (gave a talk) during the Cabinet meeting last Tuesday,” Palafox was quoted as saying by a broadsheet in a briefing on Friday.
   
He said the two structures were the New Executive Building--also known as the Borloloy building--and the employees’ canteen.
   
The NEB got its nickname after it was refurbished during the Aquino administration to the tune of P37 million.
   
“I recommended that the columns of these two buildings can stay, but the walls should be set back inland,” said Palafox. “I said this should be done first before asking 10,000 families to leave the river. The President agreed, and she ordered (MMDA chair) Bayani Fernando to take care of it,” the architect said.
   
Palafox said the incident reminded him of a conversation he had with the mayor of Chicago, Illinois, who told him the secret of good governance was that a leader should be the exemplar and not the exempted.
   
At the Cabinet meeting, the architect set down 21 recommendations to avoid a repeat of the “great flood” that submerged about 80 percent of Metro Manila in September and October.