Streets, sidewalks not for vendors

Yesterday, Aven Piramide yielded his column space to an impassioned privilege speech by Cebu City vice mayor Mike Rama on behalf of street and sidewalk vendors. Rama, if I read him right, saw the clearing of streets and sidewalks of all obstructions, including vendors, as perfectly legal but short on the matter of social justice.

Mike Rama is a friend. But, oh Mike, how you disappoint me so. Don't you think it is a little too late in the day to be crying social justice for street and sidewalk vendors when you have had the opportunity to deal with the matter in your two decades in public service? Isn't the real reason you never dealt with the matter the fact that street and sidewalk vendors are simply impossible to deal with?

I admire your generosity in describing them as people of little or no means trying to make an honest living in a place far away from their own homes. My only regret is that you could have also similarly described but sadly did not the rest of us for whom the streets and sidewalks are actually built and provided for.

There is a reason why streets are called streets and sidewalks are called sidewalks, in the same manner that markets are called markets. There is a reason why a vice mayor is called a vice mayor and a vendor a vendor, for that matter. You see, it would be a very chaotic and complicated world to live in if anything just goes.

Recently there was a big furor about somebody trying to get inside a toilet for which that somebody was not genetically equipped to use. Again, there is a reason why there is a toilet for men and another for women. Just try to imagine the consequences if just anything goes in the name of social justice or any other kind of justice for that matter and men and women can just relieve themselves, and their libidos, anywhere.

They say justice, whether social or some other kind, is blind --meaning it applies equally to everybody without fear or favor. In other words, we cannot court social justice in favor of vendors if its enjoyment is denied from the rest of us, who incidentally not only constitute the vast majority, but are in fact and actually the real beneficiaries of streets and sidewalks.

Vendors, by the very nature of their chosen calling, belong to markets. The rest of us, throughout history, have never been known to invade markets and try to dislodge and deprive vendors of their rightful place there. And that is because we know our rightful places. Vendors should know theirs as well. But it does not help in their education and discovery if they are misled into appreciating the wrong notions of co-existence and living together.

I am not disputing the right of vendors to the enjoyment of social justice. But this must not come at our expense, at the deprivation of the rest of us of our own enjoyment of social justice. If justice must truly be served, then everyone must stick to their assigned places without inconveniencing others, act out their own roles without stepping on others toes, and do what they can to rebuild this damaged nation sincerely and without reservation.