Grand hypocrisy

Lately, the public has been treated to the spectacle of plywood walls sprouting almost overnight across the city, while the impoverished families these are meant to hide watch with envious eyes as the expensive wood panels go up.

The households being concealed can barely afford their next meal. Yet many have a modest Christmas wish: that the plywood walls be left behind after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit so they may use them.

Why should the government spend public money to hide its own people when the real shame lies with leaders who squander and steal public funds, resulting in the poverty of those people?

The money spent on the cosmetic barriers could have been better spent to improve the lives of those families rather than to make them invisible.

The disgrace is not their poverty but the failure of those entrusted with handling the public wealth to use it for the people who need it most.

Malacañang said the measures were for security and that the communities were consulted.

In Parañaque City, sections near Tambo Bridge were boarded up. In Pasay City, barriers featuring works of National Artists line Jose W. Diokno Boulevard. Vendors and homeless people were cleared from areas near summit venues. This is how the country greets its guests under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

The Marcos walls say something about his administration’s duplicity and disconnect, suggesting that the government treats many Filipinos, whom it ravaged with the flood control scandal, as a problem to be hidden rather than citizens to be served.

Cleaning a house before visitors arrive involves wiping the table and sweeping the floor to remove the dust and dirt. Poverty is not like trash. It cannot be taken out for only a week.

The families near Tambo Bridge will still be there after the leaders go home, facing the same low wages, the same crowded homes, and the same lack of services.

Such indifference continues to severely harm the people behind the walls. Public funds are spent on walls, art murals, and clearing operations while the wrong priorities keep prices high.

The profligacy reminds many of the flood control scandal, where money meant for real projects went missing, making spending on decorations seem like an insult.

In Baclaran, the local government banned street vending along Roxas Boulevard, Redemptorist Road, and the areas under the Light Rail Transit line from 2 to 20 November.

The city said the vendors were consulted and may return later, subject to regulations. Many of those told to vacate their stalls were reportedly given P10,000 in ayuda, but really it was hush money.

A vendor lives on his daily sales, and almost a month without business, close to the holidays when sales should be brisk, deprives them of the opportunity to earn more.

Those who will lose income are those with the least means, while those who will gain are the visiting delegates who will be treated to a nice drive.

This is déjà vu all over again.

The first Marcos administration hid informal settlements behind wooden walls during the 1974 Miss Universe pageant and the 1976 International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings.

Under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the government demolished more than 600 homes in Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu cities before the 2007 ASEAN Summit in Cebu, while under Benigno Aquino III, the government raised a wall of tourism ads for the 2015 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders Meeting.

The practice leaves a bad taste, exposing a government that chooses a quick cover-up over curing the painful reality.

It is an exercise in futility, though. Foreign embassies and delegates already know about the real Manila, a city wallowing in the muck of corruption under the very officials entrusted to govern it.

Media covering the summit will surely be drawn to the walls themselves, which may well become a story in their own right.

Good hosts do not deceive their guests. Leaders are not judged by how effectively they conceal the poor, but by how they treat them when no one is watching.