CTALK
By Cito Beltran
The Philippine Star
By Cito Beltran
The Philippine Star
When President Noynoy Aquino announced that he would make Local government officials responsible for the deaths and damage that happened during last week’s non-stop rains, I certainly felt like telling him: “I double dare you”.
Yes I definitely wanted to see how far the President would and could go as far as making Mayors and Barangay Captains responsible for “endangering” people by allowing them to live in danger zones such as river banks, under bridges and on top of or beside geo hazardous locations. While I believe that PNoy was affected by the unnecessary loss of lives and property, the skeptic in me found it hard to believe that PNoy the politician would go any further than lip service as far as his threat or declaration of retribution was concerned.
Does PNoy enjoy enough public support to dare deal with erring and irresponsible local officials? Barangays have become the core source of votes even for national elections and Barangay Captains now have a national organization fully capable of delivering or depriving the administration of much needed votes. In the same manner, Mayors too have their own association and in some cases, some Mayors sit on top of huge numbers of votes or affluent communities. The fact that PNoy had to prop up his weak selection of Senatoriables while delivering relief goods in the provinces already show that the administration is not that politically strong.
To be fair, I believe that if left to his own decision, PNoy would have no second thoughts about inflicting pain and suffering upon irresponsible Mayors and Barangay Captains, unfortunately the process is not as simple as firing your driver or domestic help. Malacañang would first have to establish the fact that the Mayor or the Barangay Captain failed to do everything in their power to inform, warn and forcibly eject people living along riverbanks and under bridges or geo-hazardous areas. Unfortunately, even the very victims or relatives of those who died are the first to admit that they were informed, told to evacuate but they chose not to.
The sad truth is that we have too many laws that make it almost impossible to remove, eject or relocate people from danger zones. On the other hand we don’t have enough laws that makes it criminal for local officials not to do something about the situation, we don’t have laws that prevent Meralco and MWSS from supplying utilities to informal settlers, we don’t have laws preventing the COMELEC from registering informal settlers.
We don’t have laws that prevent people from taking up residence in communities where they don’t have property, rental agreement or pay local taxes. Perhaps that is where the problem lies; we need to rationalize and consolidate all laws pertaining to squatting, squatting is geo-hazardous areas, encouraging squatting for political and commercial interests. Then we have the local government code that has given too much power and too much room for interpretation to the advantage of local officials. In other words the President and this administration needs to fix the legislative problem once and for all.
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I am confident that if President Noynoy puts his mind to it, he could actually haul at least a handful of Mayors and Barangay captains to court in not to jail for blatantly disregarding their public duty or moral responsibility to use police powers, but if the President wants to make a huge dent on the problem, then he should call upon the Office of the Ombudsman to dedicate a team to study the problem and start filing cases. In the same breath, it is about time that the President calls the Department of Interior and Local Government or DILG to account in terms of what they have actually done to monitor, supervise or even discipline Local officials who have ignored or lived with the “problem”. Even the Department of Environment and Natural Resources knows that many “Open Spaces” intended for environmental management have been taken over by business establishments, local officials as well as squatters. But the DILG and the DENR have simply looked the other way and done nothing about the problem.
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Due to so many issue popping up last week, I did not get the chance to share an observation I made concerning the death of the San Beda law student who was killed in a fraternity hazing. To begin with, it should be a matter of grave concern when educated people confuse the term and concept of “Initiation” with “Hazing”.These are two extremely different things. “Initiation refers to the traditional rites of passage involving mental and emotional tests of maturity. The rites are time- honored rituals declaring your desire to be part of an organization, that you fully understand the reason, vision and purpose of the organization, and your full commitment to the organization and all it stands for.Hazing is a predetermined violent activity developed by weaklings who used the organization to lure their intended victims they despised, were jealous of, or wanted to be sure of, were equally weak minded or violently inclined. Death resulting from Hazing is not homicide. It is murder. No right minded person can claim that inflicting multiple blunt force trauma to the human body over an extended period is non lethal especially upon persons who are not physically conditioned or trained to receive such violent attacks. Hazing is Murder.
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