Move, Manila!

HAVE you seen Recto?”

When Isko Moreno eagerly asked me that question as we sat down for a Jose Rizal birth­day lunch at Diamond Hotel, for a moment there I’d thought he was referring to Recto (Reed) Bank, West PH Sea. No, of course not, he meant Recto the street in Divi­soria that’s the epicenter of traffic snarls caused by vendors, pedes­trians, jeepneys, delivery vans, pedicabs, unwalkable sidewalks, snatchers, uncollected garbage, anything and everything that has to do with selling something or making a buck. It’s a marketplace and all that’s right and wrong – fresh goods, cheap prices, no or­der and no laws but gravity and supply-and-demand, chaos, con­gestion.

Divisoria was where Mayor Erap proudly proclaimed every Decem­ber that the city government had cleared the streets and sidewalks of illegal parking, vending, hawk­ing, just as Baclaran is the bane of MMDA’s off-and-on clearing opera­tions. The two markets share the same fate: cleared now, cluttered the next day (or hour). So what was the new mayor of Manila so excited about?

He hasn’t moved into the may­or’s office yet, not until June 30, but the word has gone out that Recto, Ylaya, Juan Luna are not for sale at P150 a day per spot. “I’ve met with the barangay captains, 11 of them, and warned them. If they break the law, I will person­ally handcuff them,” Isko boasted. Recto cleaned up for business? Let’s see.

To return the city to the people, he’s set to 1) clear the streets, then he’ll target 2) obstinate jeep­neys and 3) pigheaded pedestri­ans, then 4) the greening of Ma­nila. In-between, the mission is to build a City Hall right next to the present relic of a building, keep­ing its tower and top floors for a museum. The courts will stay but the daily transactions of citizens will be moved to the new build­ing where technology will speed up the work. “Time to catch up,” he said.

Catch up? It would help if all city government bills and receipts, documents, etc. had been turned over to the 44-year-old mayor dur­ing that photo-op of a “turnover” at City Hall. “I have not seen a sin­gle piece of those papers yet,” the bright-eyed 44-year-old said.