Eyesores, the poor ain’t

For decades, Philippine governments have treated hiding poverty as if it were progress. Whenever the world comes to Manila, the poor are made to step aside.

Before the 1974 Miss Universe pageant, the 1976 IMF-World Bank meeting, and the 1981 papal visit, the Marcos Sr. government spruced up the capital under Imelda Marcos, then Metro Manila’s governor.

Before the 2015 APEC summit under President Benigno Aquino III, police, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) enforcers, and Pasay’s clean team cleared Taft Avenue of more than 2,000 street vendors.

The government of Manila took 206 street dwellers into custody and called it a “rescue.” Slum areas were walled off.

Malacañang and then Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman denied hiding the poor. Within days, the street dwellers trickled back to Roxas Boulevard.

This year, the pattern turned up in Cebu, where critics said ASEAN-themed tarpaulin along the South Road Properties blocked the view of garbage during the January ASEAN Tourism Forum. Similar tarpaulin went up again before the May summit and related meetings.

Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival said the Department of Public Works and Highways, not the city, put them up, and denied any intention of hiding the informal settlers. Whoever ordered them, the logic is the same: Cover it, don’t fix it.

Now it is Metro Manila’s turn. Parañaque has banned street vending along Roxas Boulevard, Redemptorist Road and under the LRT line from 2 to 20 November, in a cleanup run with the ASEAN National Organizing Council chaired by Executive Secretary Ralph Recto.

This paper reported that Diwata Pares, a Baclaran eatery owned by Deo Balbuena, closed for nearly two weeks, leaving about a dozen workers earning P500 a day without income. Their employer gave them P2,000 each, enough for only a few days, they said.

Meanwhile, a vendor outside Baclaran Church received no assistance and no return date, while street dwellers near the Manila Film Center were driven away.

Officials say the measures are temporary because summits demand security. Security can justify closing a lane for a motorcade. It cannot justify two weeks of lost income without compensation or sweeping up people with nowhere else to sleep.

Parañaque’s own statement undercuts its case. It concedes vendors were only temporarily allowed in Baclaran pending the Baclaran Gateway Market but gives no completion date for it. The permanent solution is the one thing not on schedule.

Clean streets are a legitimate public service, but they should be permanent, not staged for foreign arrivals. University of Santo Tomas political scientist and DAILY TRIBUNE columnist Dennis Coronacion called the exercise “just window dressing.” A vendor who loses a day’s income does not become less poor because a visiting leader fails to see him.

The government can start proving otherwise.

Recto’s council should compensate the displaced vendors and workers. Parañaque should set a completion date for the market. The MMDA, Pasay and Parañaque should tell us how many people were displaced or taken into custody, and where. And there should be no more “rescues” without a real offer of housing.

The poor are not national eyesores. They are citizens whose dignity and livelihoods deserve the same attention lavished on the country’s international image. A government confident in its achievements would have no reason to hide them.