My kind of neighbor may be yours too

A few months ago, I bought a very small piece of property in Barangay Mabolo, this city. Thanks to the foresight of the former owner, it is entirely fenced. But, my seller, owing to his social conscience, I am certain, made sure that there his front fence was so made with about a meter and a half distance from Mina Street as to provide a narrow strip of a sidewalk for pedestrians. (The land surveyor actually told me that the said sidewalk is very much a part of the small lot I acquired.)

Contrary to the intention of the previous owner, his walkway did not achieve its purpose. A neighbor, who, by the way, constructed his house on a public road, extended his structure unto this sidewalk.

One day, I paid a polite visit to the owner of the intruding structure. He was in the process of building a second story! After a brief introduction, I told him that I would not really mind his usurping a street because that was for our authorities to attend to but, I was hoping that he would clear the sidewalk fronting my property. In the course of our conversation, we agreed, manifested by a firm handshake, that he would remove his structure which ate up my land-cum-sidewalk. We even had a fixed date for the completion of the effort, May 31, 2006.

Two months after I came home from a foreign sojourn, I was disappointed to see that word of honor, at least in so far as the subject of our hand shake was concerned, no longer held sway. A part of my neighbor's house was still occupying the sidewalk. Well, he had it painted very pleasantly, but, compounding the desecration of gentleman's palabra de honor, it still was an illegal structure.

Overcome by my depressing sense of disappointment these last few months, I gathered a heart to talk to my neighbor only few days ago. His revelation startled me even more. He claimed that while he was in the process of fulfilling a word of honor, he was stopped by an unsolicited advice. According to him, in words which I'm trying to recall, "the lawyer neighbor from the Ombudsman advised me to ask your permission to allow me stay on".

My neighbor was pulling my leg. I could not believe him that he was referring to Hon. Edgardo Labella. This honorable Cebu City councilor was my buddy in the Tau Kappa Lambda Fraternity in college. Hon. Labella would know that the entire house of my neighbor usurped a public road so I was very sure he could not counsel the illegal builder to hang on to an unauthorized structure to prejudice a friend.

Aside from being a personal concern, this matter is too trivial to call the attention of the honorable kagawad to. He has far too many other more important things to do. Besides, my neighbor, like the owners of nearby houses, are probably Hon. Labella's political supporters and I don't want to put him on the spot, he being my fraternity brother,.

While this issue looks, at the very first instance, to be personal, it has, somehow a public, if not social angle. There are many streets in the city which have been either diminished by informal settlers or totally occupied by them and yet city administrations, not excluding the present one, for lack of resolve, or perhaps, logistics, have turned a blind eye. Private landowners have also borne the brunt of squatting.

I raise this point here because, I believe this disheartening situation should not go on. Citing my personal experience as a sample, our leaders should decide whether to give up the many occupied roads or get them back for the public to use. The time, I believe, is now for the government to uphold the law or bow to the reign of a tyrannical few.