POLITICAL will. Congratulations DILG and mayors for implementing the order of President Rodrigo Duterte to demolish illegal structures. We hope that you also have the will of providing decent areas for dislodged vendors. They shed tears and cursed politicians who caused their misfortune. They are your captive voters also. Vendors could be sacred cows for political reason.
In most downtown areas, we see vendors and LEOs (law enforcement officers) playing "cat and mouse." That could be normal. Vendors want to survive too. On the other side, we see some vendors coming back to their "puesto." LEOs are just on the alert. They will drive away the vendors again if DILG is sending its inspection team.
It looks funny because some cleared areas are now made parking areas for good looking vehicles, money changers, and ambulant vendors (canter trucks carrying fruits). Our local leaders and LEOs should not have fangs only ... but also wisdom tooth. In this game the weak are meat, the strong do eat.
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President Duterte loves his policemen and military. Their salary is higher than that of teachers. In the process, some policemen have been monsters by becoming "ninja cops." They are best in recycling the drugs they have confiscated. We trust policemen but we don't trust the devil inside them. Ninja cops should end in morgue.
We still have "shabulized" barangays. If DILG and the local government units are good in the demolition of illegal structures, they should be best in stopping the proliferation of drugs in the communities. Barangay captains and purok presidents know who run the drugs in their barangays.
DILG should get a "go order" from the president and start the demolition. These policemen should not be loosey-goosey and should have genuine war-gasm against drugs. Drugs are irrational response to insanity. Policemen should get the narco personalities by the balls. If they have not tried, they have not lived up to our expectation ... to serve and to protect.
People don't mind whatever "good" you did. They mind the way you did it. We want our policemen and local officials to give it all or nothing. Stopping drugs is something serious. You cannot truly live unless there is something for which you would die doing it. We have to end our present problem with drugs to have the beginning of the future.
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This is now milling time in Negros... big money for the "hacendados" and the millers, more money for the traders, and a drop in the bucket for the workers. Roads leading to the mills will be very busy. We alert our "Bantay-Dalan" task force to function well as expected. Monitor and act promptly on "wash-outs," smoke-belching vehicles, speeding, and overloaded cargo trucks.
We want to preserve life. We are telling the pedestrians and the motorists to be careful, "We don't know whether you are part of the problem or the solution, or just a part of the landscape."