Ampatuan no more along Mabini Road

BEHIND THE SCENES
Alfred P. Dizon

BAGUIO CITY – Poetic justice, we may call it. It is a welcome development that with the start of the new city administration, police are ridding streets of this tourist resort of vendors and other unsavory elements who lorded it over the roads in the past.

I had the unnerving experience early this year when I parked my old pickup truck along Mabini St. A vendor told me I had to remove the scratched but trusty vehicle from the road because he would be setting up a barbecue stand. If the vehicle was an expensive, state-of-the-art machine, maybe, the nincompoop wouldn’t have done it thinking the owner was a big-time crook or government official.

To make the long story short, I brought the matter to the police who did an investigation and it turned out, the barangay captain had issued a permit to the boss of the vendor to conduct business on the street.
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Roads are supposed to be beyond the commerce of man, or so I thought, so I informed former Mayor Peter Rey Bautista about the incident. He called up Greg Deligero, chief of the city public order and safety division and told him to rid the area of vendors, saying it was illegal.

But days and months went by and the vendors were still there even if I reiterated the matter to the mayor and despite coverage of television, radio and newspaper outfits. The POSD simply didn’t do their job. It was not the job of the police to do it.

A city hall insider said it had something to do with pockets so the vendors were untouchable. On the other parts of the road, illegal vendors were teeming selling anything from wagwag (secondhand clothes), DVD’s to children’s items. They said they were issued permits by the barangay captain to sell on the streets paying P300 as initial fee and P100 to P200 daily depending on what they were selling. A barangay insider said it is high time the Commission on Audit or Bureau of Internal Revenue conduct an audit on the barangay’s transactions as it seemed, the moolah was disappearing into thin air.
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To make matters worse, minions of the top barangay official installed potted trees along the road resulting to heavy traffic. Despite media comments, it seemed nothing could be done to remove the vendors and the potted trees from the road until the elections. It was ampatuan all over.

(To our foreign readers, ampatuan has come to be a synonym of impunity in this Banana Republic after the Ampatuan clan and their minions were accused of killing around 50 people composed of journalists, lawyers and supporters of a local candidate in Maguindanao before the May elections.)

Not to degrade the former administration, but then, everything in the area was apparently being done with ampatuan. Now, comes the return of the Mauricio Domogan administration wherein the undisputed political kingpin said he would return order to the city as mayor after three terms in Congress.
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One of his orders was to take out supervision of police auxiliaries from the POSD and return it back to city police. Domogan approved administrative order 80 which repealed AO 8 of Bautista, on supervision and control of Pas after complaints surfaced on their work.

Earlier, in a letter dated June 2, 2010, OIC city police director Supt. Roberto Soriano requested for reconsideration of administrative order of Bautista and its eventual repeal.

Domogan approved the request with assurances from the BCPO chief they will specifically perform their duties according to their mandate. The office space which the PAs occupied within city hall has since been vacated.

With this, Insp. Mencio, central business area police chief reported he and his men cleaned up the roads of illegal vendors including those along Mabini St., overpasses and public market. I saw him at his office as he briefed his men on how to do the job.
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This weekend, it seemed peace and order within the city was indeed being restored. Political will and professionalism of the police was all it needed. Our appreciation to Domogan, Soriano, Mencio, police and other officials for a job well done, Kasta ah!