Little warlords

From the upper floors of an office building in the city where I was born and bred, you can look down on the street below – and wonder where the street is.

Multi-story shanties have been built two deep on one side of the street, against the perimeter wall of another building. On the other side there’s a single row of more shanties. Laundry is done on the street, taking up more space, so even tricycles cannot drive through the street in a straight line.

Informal shelters sprouted in this part of Manila decades ago mainly for those who work in the area. But today the squatting has become so bad that most of the streets in the area have been rendered nearly impassable. This should be considered a serious problem in the city of Manila, the site of the country’s main container port, where cargo trucks crawl at one kilometer per hour on a normal day without typhoons, floods or street digging.

There are city ordinances against public obstructions and squatting. Even if squatting has been decriminalized, authorities are supposed to prevent it. The government must protect people from being washed away by torrential floods along waterways over which shanties are perched to make up for the lack of toilet facilities. Preventing squatting also eliminates the risk of possible violent confrontations in evicting the illegal settlers later.

We can’t have a national policy of encouraging the anarchy that President Duterte tolerated in that Bulacan housing project for police that was seized by members of an urban poor communist front.

There is a specific set of officials tasked by law to prevent squatting: barangay personnel, assisted by police.

The proliferation of informal settlements not only in Metro Manila but also in many other urban areas including Baguio shows the failure of the barangays in this specific task. In several areas, barangay officials themselves act as squatter landlords, collecting rent and additional fees for allowing the informal settlers to have electricity and water connections.

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Barangays are the smallest units of government in this country. And like their larger cousins, the barangays have their share of officials who act like warlords.

I don’t think President Duterte is exaggerating when he says thousands of barangay officials, most of them reportedly village captains, are involved in drug trafficking. His security officials are still debating whether or not to release Duterte’s barangay narco list, to alert voters about candidates in the May 14 elections for village posts and the useless Sangguniang Kabataan or youth councils.

In that area in Manila with the disappearing streets, deadly violence erupts regularly, with illegal drugs often at the root of feuds. At the height of Oplan Tokhang last year, drug dealers in the area were killing not only each other but also suspected stool pigeons. The deaths were on top of those shot dead by police ostensibly for resisting arrest or nanlaban. In such neighborhoods, barangay officials have to be hopelessly clueless or incompetent not to know who the drug dealers are. In several neighborhoods, the village officials themselves are the biggest peddlers of shabu.

Several of the drug kingpins in the New Bilibid Prison are believed to be directing their businesses all over the country through agents and gangs outside prison with barangay-based distribution networks.

Barangay officials engage not only in drug trafficking but also in jueteng and other illegal numbers games, in smuggling through poorly policed coastal communities, and yes, in squatting rackets.

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Unlike in the SK race, where a ban on dynasties has led to an acute lack of candidates, there seems to be sufficient candidate enthusiasm for the barangay election.

I doubt if their enthusiasm is matched by voters who will choose the village officials. In my part of town, I know the name of one particular barangay captain because I keep seeing the name splashed on portable tarpaulin roofs set up every time he allows a wake or some other private party to be held right on the sidewalk and narrow streets in a neighborhood with many shanties although it’s not strictly a slum area. Sakla and other forms of illegal gambling are usually allowed at the wakes.

Others know their barangay officials for the pain they inflict even on home-based micro entrepreneurs. Barangays are authorized to raise their own funds, and many have abused this power . Everyone trying to make an honest living, from banana cue vendor to major foreign investor, has a tale of woe about barangay requirements and fees, and the delays designed to force even the most honest entrepreneur to consider paying a bribe or “facilitation fee” just to get the business going.

Duterte has warned that dirty money will finance the reelection bids of thousands of barangay officials. The thousands are in his narco list, he said – the reason he had hoped the elections would be postponed again.

Surely Duterte knows, however, that postponements won’t keep drug-tainted barangay officials from seeking reelection. So perhaps he had other plans for them. Unfortunately, he openly lamented, he could not kill them all.

Short of adding the barangay officials to the nanlaban list, people can take the non-violent route and vote the crooks and good-for-nothing incompetents out of office.

The problem is whether there are better alternatives. This system needs not just a purge of rotten officials but a general overhaul. There must be a better system of governance at the grassroots.