Market thieves who?

“In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress 'suspects.’” Noam Chomsky

By Alex P. Vidal

SINCE the news broke out early this year that several characters with "strong" connections in the city hall were behind the thievery or unauthorized collections of fees, among other anomalies in the Iloilo Central Market, no names of suspects have surfaced yet.

Officially no one has been identified or charged in any formal report.

Media also failed to zero in on the real identities of the culprits as they were waiting for Councilor Rodel Agado to spill the beans.

Although some names have surfaced in the gossip mill, nobody has owned up to the anomalies and bitterly deny any wrongdoing or culpability.

It boggles the mind why Agado was hard-pressed to mention their names since they were already allegedly identified by witnesses.

In fact, it appears that Agado, a public market habitue even before he became a public official, knows some of them. 

Agado, chair of the market committee, who blew the whistle on these unscrupulous city hall employees, have failed to name them in his recent privileged speech in the regular session of the city council.

DEFEND

Agado only exhorted the “suspects” to defend themselves from accusations hurled against them when his committee conducts a formal investigation starting November 13.

In other words, the people will only speculate about the identities of these suspects who will be known only once they are invited in the hearing.

What if none of those to be invited will show up during the committee investigation?

The law cannot compel them to appear and incriminate themselves.

How can they honor any invitation to appear in the committee hearing when there is no formal complaint lodged against them yet?

How can one defend himself if there are no formal charges filed against him?

“Except for one who has already been dismissed for tapping on city power lines to run his dormitory and water business, at least eight of these suspects will be invited to come to that hearing to defend themselves,” said Agado as quoted in a report by city hall beat reporter and columnist Wenceslao Mateo in the October 30 issue of The Daily Guardian.

Mateo’s report said one suspect “is a market official charged for allegedly usurping the power of the mayor to appropriate and approve stall occupancies.”

DUMMIES

The guy, Mateo’s report added, “is also suspected of employing dummies at the market after witnesses claimed that he allegedly paid for the rentals of several delinquent stall occupants.”

“Another suspect is a regular employee who allegedly divested some P200,000 in market collections,” added the report.

According to the report, the Commission on Audit has already recommended to the City Legal Office the filing of a graft case against the regular employee.

“The rest of the suspects are job hires who either collected market fees without issuing tickets, failed to remit their collections, or tampered receipt entries to chip off some amount from their collections. Some of the suspects purportedly admitted their guilt to both the executive market committee and Agado,” concluded the report.

HOLD

We were surprised why Agado had to hold his punches during the privileged speech when it was supposed to be the perfect opportunity for him to skin those rapscallions alive.

For his failure to name names after unloading the “tuklo” (colloquial word for thief) accusation, public criticism has boomeranged on Agado, a former crusading radioman.

No guilty party is stupid to honor any committee investigation if he knows that he will only be lynched and humiliated.

We hope Agado can have a little success in his efforts to lower the boom on these dishonest city hall employees.

The only consolation for him is that he is being reportedly backed up by Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog, who is also hell-bent to eradicate his office with undesirable employees.

No politician will declare war vs sidewalk vendors

“Illegality will never solve the problem of political lawlessness.” Emanuel Celler

By Alex P. Vidal

EFFORTS to clear the sidewalks of Calle Real in downtown, City Proper with vendors almost succeeded in 1989 and in the early 90’s when no less than then Mayor Rodolfo “Roding” Ganzon led the campaign to eradicate the “eye sores” that blocked the way and occupied almost 80 percent of the space intended for shoppers and pedestrians.

Ganzon created a city hall task force to deal with the problem, but when the task force failed to totally drive away the vendors, the mayor personally settled the matters by his own self by literally kicking the fruits and other items displayed in the sidewalks by recalcitrant vendors.

He was like Hercules cleaning the Augean stables. The only difference was the king of Elis did not retaliate against Hercules, while the vendors hauled Ganzon, touted as the “prince of the Timawa”, to court for “harassment and abuse of authority.”

Ganzon was so decisive and ruthless that even in the sidewalks of Iloilo central market and Iloilo terminal market, he kicked the obstacles and fruit stands like a FIFA World Cup ball and toppled the grapes, oranges, apples and mangoes to the ground.

DEFIANT

For awhile, defiant vendors, who had earlier tried to resist by firing diatribes against Ganzon in radio interviews, decided to cool down and stayed away from Calle Real sidewalks for fear of another wrath from the city hall soccer player.

“The law must be applied to everyone—rich or poor,” boomed Ganzon, then the No. 1 enemy of the late President Cory Aquino.

Ganzon, whose favorite quote was Abraham Lincoln’s “God must love the poor, He created many of them,” justified his gung-ho approach on the problems with illegal vendors by insisting that they destructed the flow of business in Calle Real because aside from blocking the sidewalks, they also paralyzed businesses in nearby and adjacent shops that paid taxes and operated with valid business permits.

Ganzon had neither fear nor hesitation to deal  with illegal vendors with iron hands because “I wanted to be fair with everyone, including the Filipino-Chinese traders who operated legitimate businesses in Calle Real.”

CRITIC

His number one radio critic, the late former city councilor Melchor Nava, called him “Iloilo City’s Hitler.”

Ganzon, with all pun intended, replied by ribbing Nava: “Akig lang ining si Melchor Nava sa akon kay pati ang baligya sang kirida ya sa sidewalk gin pakakas ko man (Melchor Nava is just mad at me because I removed from the sidewalks the items sold by his mistress).”

Nava said he had no mistress who was an illegal vendor. Irked, he challenged Ganzon to a fistfight in his blocktime program over the defunct DYRP Radyo Tagring.

When Ganzon and Nava accidentally met in the demolition area of squatters at Brgy. Rizal Estanzuela, City Proper several weeks later, Ganzon, surrounded by bodyguards that included his tough son, Freeman, loudly confronted Nava about his braggadocio: “Oh, ano?” (What now?)

“Wala na to meyor ah. Politika lang ni ang aton ya hehe (Forget about it, mayor. This is only politics),” Nava quickly replied smiling.

When Ganzon was suspended from office for 60 days, Vice Mayor Mansueto “Mansing” Malabor, took over the reigns of the city hall and pampered the sidewalk vendors.

‘STAY PUT’

Egged by then Cory’s executive secretary and now Senate President Frank Drilon to “stay put” during a tense city hall standoff after Ganzon refused to step down and defied the suspension order meted out by then Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) secretary Luis T. Santos, Malabor was supported by vendors with ax to grind against Ganzon, tagged during his heydays as senator as “the stormy petrel of the south.”

In Malabor’s three full terms as city mayor after Ganzon, sidewalk vendors were back with a vengeance! They mushroomed with alacrity in every nook and cranny in downtown, City Proper; many of them built shanties and wooden stalls to store their unsold items. They became unstoppable.

When the Filipino-Chinese community called his attention to the “growing” number of illegal sidewalk vendors in Calle Real, Malabor refused to touch the vendors, a powerhouse sector of voters, with a ten-foot pole.

In others words, he pampered and tolerated them. They were mostly “poor” and they delivered votes that gave him overwhelming mandates in every mayoral contest.

Pro-sidewalk vendor Malabor massacred the “elitists” Nene Consing and Victor Facultad in two successive mayoral jousts. Malabor’s populist stand on the sidewalk vendors issue bore fruits.

The “victorious” sidewalks vendors remain to be the kings and queens of Calle Real until today under Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog.