Patchwork

Churches always look their best during the Christmas season. During this holiday period, a drive at night to the Las Piñas church that is home to the bamboo organ should be part of the itinerary of tourists and the faithful.

The drive through Quirino Highway, once the lone main thoroughfare from the Redemp-torist Church in Baclaran, Parañaque to Las Piñas and then Cavite, can be pleasant at night. Less traffic and pollution, and in some portions of the highway in Parañaque, Christmas lights strung across the street enliven even dingy areas.

There is no uniformity in the Christmas décor, however. The street Christmas lights end where fiesta-like buntings start. Some spots have neither lights nor bunting; only the faces of Parañaque politicians, greeting people a merry Christmas, are displayed on the streets. The streamers are where city taxes go: that thought is guaranteed to dampen holiday cheer.

You can tell when you have left Parañaque and entered Las Piñas by the white Christmas lanterns on the lampposts. St. Joseph Parish Church, home of the bamboo organ, is also festooned with white lanterns in the traditional star shape.

In my childhood my family would drive from the city of Manila to an open area near the church to buy our Christmas lanterns. That area as well as nearby sidewalks were stocked with an enormous array of Christmas lanterns, mostly made of Japanese paper. The most common design was a star in a circle with two tails, but others were shaped like fish, bells, candles with a base of holly, or old world street lamps. The products made Las Piñas the lantern-making capital in this part of Luzon.

Today, in the age of torrential rains in December, few people buy paper lanterns. The papel de hapon has been replaced by plastic, but the colors are limited to basic red, green, yellow, white and blue.

The creative bamboo or chicken wire foundations for paper lanterns shaped like fish, bells and Santa and his sleigh have been replaced by metal, shaped into almost anything, and studded with dancing lights.

Several stalls also sell the more durable (and more expensive) multicolored capiz lanterns that used to be sold mainly in Pampanga and Bulacan.

It’s still a pretty sight, especially at night, but it will be prettier if there could be uniformity in the holiday decor at least throughout a single avenue. I’ve seen this in other countries, including those with no strong Christian tradition but simply like the idea of holiday cheer and gift-giving: a main thoroughfare is uniformly draped with lights, with street lamps also displaying the same holiday motif. It’s always a delight to behold. Side streets or parallel streets can have individual motifs, but always, there is evidence of coordinated if not centralized planning for a particular area.

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In our case, it is evident that even barangays within a single city prefer to do things their way. The result is a patchwork of pretty, drab and downright seedy portions, all along just one thoroughfare.

A similar patchwork can be seen in our road networks, where decisions for construction, repair and maintenance of short stretches are made, often on a whim and depending on the need for commissions, by different agencies and individuals.

The lack of coordination, the every-barangay-for-itself mentality is not confined to roads and Christmas ornaments. Even local governments in Metro Manila only grudgingly allow the Metro Manila Development Authority to coordinate the delivery of certain services. These include traffic management, garbage collection and clearing of squatters from waterways that cut across several cities.

Within and outside Metro Manila, local government executives can stop the national government from evicting squatters even from the banks of waterways or from slopes that are prone to landslides.

Many local politicians derive their support from these squatter communities, actively courting the votes of “informal” settlers during election time. That word is in quotes because a number of them have been living in those areas for decades and are actually paying rent to syndicates with connections to the local government.

There are laws requiring the police and barangay officials to prevent anyone from building shanties especially along waterways and certain disaster-prone areas. But cops obey city government officials or enforce court orders. In the absence of such orders, it is rare for them to initiate squatter clearing operations. If the mayor wants to invite more squatters to swell his support base, no cop will get in the way.

Mayors also court the support of barangay officials, which could be one reason the government’s representatives at the grassroots enjoy a degree of authority and fiscal autonomy that can be easily abused.

There are barangay officials who are directly involved in illegal gambling operations. When a resident dies, the wake, usually held several nights longer than usual, can also be used as an excuse for gambling operations. This cannot happen without the knowledge of barangay personnel. In some cases, cadavers unclaimed in morgues are rented for such wakes. It’s not unusual for barangay officials to allow the wake to spill over into the street, even if it means closing the road to traffic.

A barangay captain can spend public funds for streamers for his personal Christmas greetings instead of street beautification for the holidays.

Residents with competent barangay and local government officials will have clean streets and lovely holiday ornaments to boost Christmas cheer.

The rest will have to content themselves with patchworks of cheer and blah.