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.
