Beyond traffic jams, stone throwing

JEERS to TV newscasts, some major broadsheets and a radio commentator for virtually reducing the September demolition in North Triangle, Quezon City to a violent stone-throwing incident and major traffic problem. CHEERS to Bulatlat.com and Aksyon of TV5 for providing the much-needed context.

Ted Failon’s commentary did not help make sense of the demolition the day before. In Tambalang Failon at Webb aired over dzMM, he merely dismissed the demolition as an irksome event because of the traffic jam it caused at EDSA.

Live coverage by the ABS-CBN News Channel and QTV-11 did not offer anything substantial either. Precious airtime and the effort of going live were wasted by shots of children playing hopscotch at EDSA. No residents, urban poor groups (among them Kadamay and Anakpawis) nor local officials were interviewed, to give viewers some sense of why the demolition led to a near riot.

The broadsheets either carried pictures of the stone throwing and of the police chasing protesters (Manila Bulletin, Manila Standard Today) or reported the events without offering any background (The Manila Times, Philippine Daily Inquirer; the latter only reported that the Quezon City Regional Trial Court had decided that the “demolition was premature”). It was the alternative news site Bulatlat that did.

Bulatlat reported that there is a long-standing plan to develop the National Housing Authority-owned area into the Quezon City Central Business District (QC-CBD). Executive Order No. 670 (Rationalizing and Speeding Up the Development of the East and North Triangles, and the Veterans Memorial Area of Quezon City), which Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed on May 4, 2007, led to the creation of the QC-CBD. Ayala Land, Inc., meanwhile, entered into an agreement with the NHA to develop the North Triangle area for P22 billion. Some 6,000 families, a number of them government employees, live in the area.

The residents had refused to be relocated to Rodriguez (Montalban) in Rizal, citing problems such as limited or no access to livelihood and education, alleged substandard construction of the houses they were expected to move into, and the relocation area’s being  flood and earthquake-prone  (the housing project is reportedly situated in an area traversing the Marikina Fault Line).

Aksyon reported the demolition from a legal perspective.  It cited provisions of RA 7279 or the Lina Law and how, under the law, government should provide resettlement areas in the same city where the demolition was being done. But it also reported on how informal settlers were able to stay on even if the government owns the land.

Section 28 of the Lina Law says “that in cases of eviction and demolition pursuant to a court order involving underprivileged and homeless citizens, relocation shall be undertaken by the local government unit concerned and the National Housing Authority with the assistance of other government agencies…”

The report also said that according to the same law the local government has the responsibility to prevent further construction of illegal housing units.  Section 30 states that “the barangay (village), municipal or city government units shall prevent the construction of any kind of illegal dwelling units of structures within their respective localities.”

Neither can resettled families rebuild their illegal settlement units in the same area from where they have been removed.

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