Is corruption the reason for a road disappearance?

A little bird perched on my window sill and whispered a rejoinder on my earlier write up about the disappearance of a road in Barangay Mabolo, this city. My enigmatic source claimed to have visited the area for whatever purpose he did not tell me and agreed with the observation that the concrete street fronting the Mabolo Sports Complex, having been fully occupied by informal settlers, had already completely disappeared from our city road map. In his visit, a VECO installed street lamp was lit.

My source probably just wanted to court my favor. He knew I have a very small property nearby and without sounding ad hominems in his argument, he posited that it would be to my distinct advantage if the road were cleared of illegal structures. He went to the extent of hinting (maybe perhaps he wanted to evade direct quote) it was possible that some people might have been paying good money to protect them from being ejected from this property of public domain.

Without meaning to disparage my source, I told him that my indicators could not lend credence to that malicious innuendo. For one, Mina Street is not the only city road that is totally invaded by settlers either completely or partially. There are many such city streets which have been removed from public use and appropriated by private individuals. For another point, the failure of officials to protect the general public from this unlawful intrusion may be attributed to humongous volume of squatters. There are just too many of them to attend to. Over night, a squatter is capable of erecting his structure. Finally, I still held in high respect the integrity of our government officials. They had sworn to uphold the law I was not prepared to think that they would violate their oath.

Just the same, for purposes of academic discussion, this birdie friend of mine came up with the information that at some time in the past, our city council planned to sell this road to the squatters. To further that plan, they asked a government office to take a look at the value of the land so that the occupants would be asked to pay for their share.

Theoretically, this was not possible. We already said in the past that a property within the public domain, like a road, lies beyond the commerce of man. Such transaction as selling a part of the street to a squatter would necessarily fall within this ambit of prohibition. It would be a legal wrong to subject a public highway to a commercial transaction like its sale. The resulting deal could be nullified.

It is not difficult to see the rationale. A street is built for the general public to use. Common weal, not the benefit of few individuals, underlies its construction. To sell it to anyone is to defeat the interest of the public.

However, my friend and I, working on a possible mind set, assumed that the members of city council, politicians that they are, wanted to corral the votes of the subject settlers. Planning to ingratiate themselves to the electors, they desired to impress upon these settlers their intention to remove the road from public domain and sell portions thereof to them. Their first legal step would have been to ordain the closure of the road. Even then, my friend said did not happen. His own investigation revealed that this was not done by the city council.

All these led me back to square one. Having shown some possible incidents tied to the disappearance of Mina Extension in Mabolo, I could not find a plausible reason that would stop the demolition of these settlers. Oh yes, there is one. And that, to my discomfort, is what my little birdie whispered to me.

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