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Monday, July 17, 2006
Editorial: Paradise lost
WHAT is the greater good?
In a cynic’s world, democracy is terrorism wielded by the elected against the few for the greater good.
Sidewalk vendors and informal settlers of Cebu and Mandaue might share this view. They are now the object of a crackdown by city officials preparing for the Asean summit this December.
In the July 16, 2006 issue, Sun.Star Cebu’s Gingging A. Campaña and Rose O. Verzosa reported that Cebu City Hall intends to relocate 138 informal residents viewed as being in the way of the road rehabilitation at the North Reclamation Area.
Mandaue City Hall is also eyeing to demolish the shanties of 408 families living below the first Mandaue-Mactan bridge—a place ironically named Paradise Island.
Officials said the demolition will make way for security and beautification measures in time for the Asean summit.
This has prompted Magno Dionson to write to Mayor Thadeo Ouano. The former city councilor protested that prioritizing Asean officials and their guests over Paradise Island families is “most unkind and unchristian.”
Population bomb
Politicians usually loath to acknowledge that there is a “squatter problem.” Political survival, more than correctness, dictate that these settlements are tolerated as “informal” and “invisible.”
According to the United States Department of State’s “2000 Country Report on Human Rights Practices,” Philippine “politicians generally recognize the squatters’ voting power.” It estimates the sector as comprising “at least 30 percent of the country’s urban population.”
The uneasy truce can be suspended, however, when the political agenda is superseded by a higher economic good. The nongovernment organization Ecumenical Commission for Displaced Families and Communities documents that mass displacement is the lot of informal communities demolished by the government for “economic purposes.”
Up also for ejection are 1,000 squatter families that may blight the landscape of the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC). Still being constructed, the CICC will be the main venue of the Asean summit.
Held for the first time in Cebu, the summit is viewed as a chance to promote Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu to foreign investors.
Endangered species
There is no lack of laws, only of political will, to protect the informal settlements being endangered by development pressures.
The Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992 provides that eviction is only legal when there is a danger to the lives of the settlers and to the community as a whole.
Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña has given vendors two weeks to clear the sidewalk and other areas in 14 locations in the city. His rationale is that the vendors, by occupying portions of the sidewalks, force pedestrians on the roadway, thus endangering their lives.
Aside from requiring governments to provide sites for relocation, the law stipulates that families transfer to areas where they can avail themselves of basic services like water and electricity, as well as find work.
Mandaue City Administrator Serafin Blanco said that approximately half of Paradise Island’s residents will be relocated to the Paradise Island Housing Project. However, since the National Housing Authority has not yet released the P100-million budget to construct two five-story buildings, the informal settlers cannot yet be relocated.
According to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the Philippines’ track record in providing for the informal settlers’ economic, social and cultural rights is marred by allegations that “80 percent of government funds (earmarked) for socialized housing went to 50 percent of the population in the upper-income bracket.”
Flogging a dead horse
Dismantling illegal settlements has often been defended as being for the greater good of residents since these places are overcrowded and unhygienic.
The Cebu Port Authority is offering a disturbance fee of P10,000 to every squatter who dismantles his structure and moves out. Cebu City Hall is offering P5,000 less for families not availing themselves of relocation.
This pittance will hardly last a month for families who will have no roof over their heads.
The housing problem remains grave despite the 2004 launching of President Arroyo’s Urban Asset Reform Project Management Office (UAR-PMO). This was created to implement Hernando de Soto’s ideas for incorporating informal settlements into the legal system.
Admired by Arroyo for his “ideas of unlocking the potential of the poor,” the economist observed that since migration from the countryside to urban areas could not be halted, it was more realistic to enable poor people to gain “property rights... so they can turn land they occupy but do not own into useful capital.”
The UAR-PMO was intended to implement Arroyo’s program of giving the squatters land titles, which can be used as collaterals for bank loans to start a small business.
With local governments preferring to banish squatters rather than addressing root causes—De Soto identified 168 steps to legalize an illegally occupied property and a processing time between 13 and 25 years—the country will have to remain a paradise lost to the homeless.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 17, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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