MANILA, Philippines -- The scene was all too familiar, as heart-wrenching as it was intellectually agonizing. Stalls were being demolished, the goods confiscated, as the hapless vendors wailed and cried. Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Bayani Fernando had ordered the streets kept free for the smooth flow of traffic come the All Souls’ Day trek to the cemeteries.A “barangay” [neighborhood district] council chairman tried to reason with the MMDA, saying that the vendors just borrowed money for their stalls, hoping to cash in on the once-a-year bonanza around the cemeteries, and there was no need for harsh measures. Fernando replied: We have to teach them a lesson, and confiscation is the only language they understand. Fernando speaks for the traveling public, and for the larger interest in keeping the roads and sidewalks free for cars and pedestrians. These public spaces must not be appropriated for private profit, and Fernando can rightly take credit for applying the full force of the law against all profiteers, big and small. But, as former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban said in one of his historic decisions, there is “a right way to do the right thing at the right time.” To treat honest hardworking vendors as if they were criminals -- like those abominable thieves who engineered the aborted ZTE deal -- is not the right way to celebrate All Souls’ Day. It is strange that in a country where business schools offer fancy courses on entrepreneurship, we unleash burly men against genuine entrepreneurs, small-time in capital and perhaps in imagination, but certainly no free-loaders, no alms-seekers. They are bolder than 2nd- or 3rd-generation tycoons who inherited the wealth but not the risk-taking spirit of their ancestors. It is stranger still that in a country where half a million pesos is passed around in paper bags like party favors -- and Honorable men and women step out of Malacañang carrying goodie bags filled not with Halloween treats but with money looted by fellow notables—that we apply the full brunt of the law against vendors who eke out a living, earning a P1 margin for each plastic cup of watered-down buko juice. But saddest of all, there is really no one to speak up for the vendors if we rely on the political and democratic processes. There is no party-list group representing them. They are not organized into any trade union. They are not geographically discrete. And if they do, they see each other as rivals and would actually say that these demolitions were OK for as long as they target the competition. If the goal of the MMDA is to clear the public spaces of vendors, it is not enough simply to drive them away. If Fernando says that demolitions are the only language the vendors understand, he should remember the other, equally compelling language they hear, that of economic survival. They will return, Chairman Fernando, for as long as that is the only way to earn a living. And we, as a society, must support their inexplicable grit to be honest amid life’s cruelty and injustice. This time, it’s my turn to use the language of supply and demand. If the public keeps on buying from the vendors, it means that the vendors offer a valuable service that the public is willing to pay for. I’m not saying that we must therefore offer our sidewalks wherever that public is willing to buy and the vendors are willing to sell. No. Rather, local governments must allocate space for these vendors, situate them reasonably close to the buying public, and charge them proper rental. Right now, the vendors are already paying rent -- to all the wrong people! Don’t tell me they can squat without paying off the police, the “barangay” watchmen, even the security guards, in whatever currency, whether it is in petty cash or free meals. In that sense, Fernando is right: Illegal vending abets corruption. But his answer is wrong. The solution is not to stop the vending itself; the solution is to legalize the vending, by providing the vendors a proper place to sell their goods, and collecting fees for the value received. We must see the vendors as legitimate businessmen whom we must foster and develop. Whenever you pass those “Sweet Corn” vendors with handwritten cardboard signs saying “May Luto,” ask yourself how much they earn from each “mais” [corn], how much for a whole day of sitting under the rain or sun, and compute how much of your loose change could have made a difference in their lives. (How do they bring their corn all the way there, and how do they bring home the unsold corn at 8 p.m. when they close shop for the day?) They don’t need a school of entrepreneurship to know that they must sell if they want to survive. What worries me even more is the callous attitude of the educated Filipino, confronted with Fernando’s argument that we must keep the public spaces public. Sure, Fernando has a point, but it’s not as if his is the rational view and our opposition is, at best, a humanitarian plea. This is not a debate of the hard-nosed versus the bleeding heart, of reason versus mushy emotion. No, Fernando’s is just one of several options, and we as human beings must choose the most humane among them. The realist should say: Vendor demolitions do not defeat the law of supply and demand, cannot match the law of survival, and the vendors will inevitably return; with demolitions, there is pain but no gain. The dreamer should say: Vendor demolitions punish the honest and hardworking, and crush the dreams of those who still innocently value a good day’s work. On demolition day, it was “the quality of [our] mercy” that was on the line, our shared humanity and innate sense of justice that was at stake -- and we were all diminished. * * * Comments to passionforreason@gmail.com More Inquirer columns Previous columns:
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