There is a new challenge of the city
Every now and then, we hear about something's going worse before it gets better. When I first came across this statement, I got befuddled. I did not understand why following the demonstration of economic power by the Organization of Petroleum Exportation Countries largely by withholding deliveries of precious oil, the rest of the world had first to suffer worse crises before they could improve their economies.
It is quite obvious that this line - "it becomes worse before it gets better" - is a term used more by economic analysts than by other professionals. That should explain my initial difficulty in understanding it. But, lately, I hear some people applying it to a different situation. When informal settlers learned of the successful eviction by the Magat family of more than a hundred houses in San Miguel, Barangay Apas, they felt that could expect more forcible court authorized ejectments in the near future before the clouds of uncertainty would settle.
A fellow-Kasambagan resident friend of mine called me with a saddening piece of information. He said that the demolition of their house is set in a month's time. It appears that a piece of land which had served as their family's home for more than three decades is apparently owned not by the government, as they previously thought, but by a private party. They and few other co-settlers lost an ensuing litigation.
This friend did not call me for help. He and everyone in his family accepted their fate and are ready to move out. He read my article last Thursday when I wrote about the need of the city to create an office to address the concerns of landowners and informal settlers locked in a kind of tug-of-war that should be expected to favor the former. In our talk, he mentioned that indeed, there are other landowners who are seeking the ouster of settlers. He lamented in not seeming to understand the surge of similar incidents.
This is the worse that is going to take place before the situation gets better. There are some landowners who have seen that they need to assert their ownership. The Magat incident is their cue. Their earlier reservations on ejecting settlers have been answered by the Magat experience. After all, they can have the legal order back them up if their ownership is legitimate. So now, buoyed by the success of the Magat family, they feel like asserting their dominion even if they have to go to court for the purpose.
It is not out of the box to imagine that there are hundreds of informal settlers situated similarly as those in San Miguel. This phenomenon of housing demolition is not taking place in our city alone. Nationwide, homes of informal settlers are getting ejected and those affected have not seen relief. When for instance, numerous occupants of far away Quezon City massed vainly against a corps of demolition personnel, they only showed how futile would it be to fight a legal order.
To make the situation better, the city government has to look for that elusive middle ground. There is no shirking the primordial responsibility. As the present situation indicates, it has the duty of protecting the landowners so that they can enjoy their proprietary rights. But at the same time it has the capacity and the financial resources to provide help to the otherwise oppressed landless.
Let our leaders formulate the policy to reach this objective of balancing the interests of the landowners and the well-being of the less privileged on this very important issue. This is the new challenge of the city under the leadership of His Honor Cebu City Mayor Michael L. Rama. When it does so at the soonest possible time, then it also hastens the "gets better" aspect of the equation.
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