WHAT HAPPENED. Two separate incidents have fueled the clash of positions on the modernization project now going on at the city's iconic Carbon Market: (a) the March 11 protest against the Market Operations Division (MOD) and (b) the March 21 commotion over railings installed close to the vendors' interim stalls, which involved market personnel, the dreaded Probe demolition team and developer Megawide.
Last Wednesday, March 23, at the City Council's regular session, differences of opinion set off some sparks between the majority party Barug and minority BOPK.
POINTS OF DISPUTE. In a privileged speech, Minority Floor Leader Nestor Archival Sr. reported the clash between some vendors and City Hall personnel who were installing railings near the vendors' stalls at the interim market along M.L. Quezon Ave. He deplored alleged lack of planning and coordination with the vendors and disregard of their right to livelihood. The councilor said the railings obstructed view of, and access to, the goods.
In helping mount the vendors' cause, a plank in BOPK's 2022 platform, Archival raised the women's card, noting that the "oppression" is "ironically committed" during International Women's Month.
In return fire, Councilor Joel Garganera -- who's in the Barug 2022 lineup although he filed as a Kusug bet but is listed by Comelec as independent -- alleged that children were employed in the ongoing protest over the Carbon project, putting them at risk. They must have been orchestrated, Garganera said, "they cannot be on their own," citing the horde of kids in the video rushing to and bumping the gate of the market managers' office.
Barug Councilor Joy Pesquera took potshot not at the current stance of Archival on defense of women, particularly the "destitute." She shared Archival's concern over rights of women. Instead, she blasted at the "inconsistency" of the BOPK councilor's stand. She said he didn't rush to the defense of vendors who, in two separate instances "sometime in 2001 to 2004," were stopped and blocked from selling religious articles near the church gate and the sidewalk outside the church. (Archived news says the padlocking of Sto. Niño vendors' stalls was ordered by then mayor Tomas Osmeña in 2007. Pesquera was a councilor 1998-2001, 2001-2004, 2004-2007, and 2016-2019. She's now serving the unexpired term of then councilor Dondon Hontiveros who rose to vice mayor when then VM Mike Rama filled the seat vacated by mayor Edgardo Labella's death.)
COMMON CAUSE. The rival councilors apparently found common cause in women's rights and rights of children. They all professed love and concern, mouthing the same rhetoric.
Disagreement was on whether women vendors at Carbon were being oppressed, as Archival alleged, or kids were tapped to take part in the protest against the market authorities, as Garganera alleged.
Archival didn't even attack the idea of, or decision on, the Carbon project. He has not echoed the stop-the-privatization line in BOPK's Margot/Tomas Osmeña campaign pitch. Or the minority floor leader could be just trying to delay the project. Whatever the order from the chief, he was keeping the issue alive in the Sanggunian.
SUSPENSION, MORE INFO. Resolutions of Archival, with that of colleague Councilor Eugenio Gabuya Jr., mostly asked for suspension ("hold in abeyance") of Megawide's works, particularly those that would displace vendors and Sitio Bato settlers. From as far back as November 17 to January 26, February 23 and March 16, the minority-backed moves were not for outright cancellation.
Stoppage, they must know, couldn't be legally done, if Megawide would resist. The so-called corrective measures are made possible with MW's consent. The Sanggunian will tackle the supplemental agreement when two committees, finance and markets, will report it out on April 6 (not this March 30 as earlier reported).
Even the matter of railings, which set off the protests, is reportedly fixed already by Mayor Michael Rama who moving it farther from the stalls.
HOW BOPK SCORED. Councilor Garganera disputed Archival's claim that the railings were oppressive. Showing a map where the half-a-kilometer barrier stretches from MC Briones to F. Gonzales, Market Unit 2 up to Escario, Garganera said the railings are a means to define boundary between vendors' space and consumer/pedestrian space.
In those places, however, location of railings from the stalls does not impede consumers from the vendors' goods. Archival countered, "Not so at M.L. Quezon area," where the interim market is. He scored on that one, not being contradicted yet by Garganera and in effect being affirmed by Mayor Rama when he agreed with the vendors last March 22 not to set up railings "too near," or more than three meters, from the stalls.
YOUNG'S VIEW. On Pesquera's allusion to political agenda, blasting at the "inconsistency" of Archival's stand on helping the poor vendors, Councilor Joy Augustus Young noted that it could distract them from the main issue, the Carbon market. Just because one didn't criticize the move in the past doesn't mean one can't criticize it now, Young said. The other Joy's point, in the opinion of Joy Young, was not the central issue, which is Carbon Market. But then, it's irresistible to ask: You're so self-righteous now, how about you during your administration?
No estoppel on a legislator's vote or stand. And it's beside the main point: the Carbon controversy. Besides, assailing motive is double-edged, inherently dangerous, especially among politicians.
REOPENING MAIN JVA. Even as the committees on finance and markets are set to report the proposed supplemental agreement on the Carbon market project, Councilor Archival made motions (corollary to his speech) that included request for the modernization plans and designs, schedules of work, a review of Megawide's investment plan and sharing of revenue with the City, and, drumroll, a public hearing.
Wouldn't that in effect reopen the main agreement?
Wait, the public hearing is part of the host of "requests" from the minority floor leader, which means Megawide and/or the mayor may put its foot down on some of the said requests. Earlier this month, the office of the mayor provided the City Council with the original JVA and the proposed supplemental agreement, with a ton of attachments, according to Atty. Charisse Piramide. Which raised the question, wasn't all that information supplied just before the Sanggunian reviewed and approved the JVA last January 2021?