Chapter 6

Managing the Post-Colonial City Crisis & the Crisis of Management

Replaying Strategic Dualities Under the Aquino Regime, 1986-1991
Maelstrom in the Mainstream
Flashpoints of popular urban and rural discontent led by the organised Left started to intersect with budding activism among the middle classes and fractions of the traditional oligarchy discriminated by autocratic rule. This realignment of forces occurred at a point when the cumulative impact of Marcos dictatorial economic policies, mismanagement and compulsive corruption translated into a major economic crisis in the Philippines during the late 70s and early 80s. Since Marcos blocked all venues of legitimate redress, these alienated sectors more and more systematically turned to militant forms of struggle in what had been fashionably known as the parliament of the streets. Elite oppositionist, ex-senator Benigno Aquinos blatant

assassination in 1983, believed to have been engineered by the regime, finally galvanised these disparate forces into a coherent and massive antidictatorship coalition. Managing to unite behind the charismatic widow of the murdered senator, and facing a Left-led boycott, the fragmented elite opposition backed up the candidacy of Corazon Aquino in a snap

presidential election orchestrated by Marcos in 1985 under heavy US pressure as a last-ditch attempt to save his fast-eroding legitimacy. Although Marcos won the elections through widespread fraud and manipulation, Aquino contested the results through massive mobilisation of populist support or what she referred to as peoples power. With the latter interfusing with a chain of defections within the state bureaucracy and an outright mutiny among disgruntled military officers, coupled with the gradual distancing of the regimes staunchest ally, the US,

authoritarian state rule was finally shattered in1986 and replaced by an elite-led liberal democratic government under the Aquino leadership. However, state power rested on a relatively fluid alliance of disparate elite factions constantly jockeying for vantage position. This intra-elite struggle regularly recrudesced in abortive military coup attempts, some of which were close to toppling the Aquino regime.i The relative relaxation of political restrictions and the widening of democratic space that followed in the immediate wake of the popularly backed power-shift by the Aquino take-over, gave urban grassroots organisations some room for redressing long-standing

grievances and demands simply ignored by the previous regime. By then the already all-too familiar issues of: Socialised housing, land tenure guarantees via an authentic urban land reform, employment, basic services delivery, democratic participation in decision making processes, etc. But how much of these fundamental woes were really addressed by the new dispensation and its urban managers? And what management strategies and technologies were employed to curb the urban crisis?

Resurrecting Co-optation and Coercion

Popular support behind the Aquino victory required the delivery of popular concessions. Squatter organisations, maximising the opportunity of initial democratic space, were among the first to claim their dues on longstanding accounts. An official quid pro quo, following a series of direct dialogues and consultations between these groups and the state, came in the form of unprecedented but controversial executive orders unfolding in rapid succession by the end of 1986. To reconcile two key grassroots demands - democratic

representation and a general moratorium on demolitions and payment of ransom development costs in pre-existing housing projects - Aquino passed Executive Orders (EO) 82 and 84 in December 1986. The former created the Presidential Committee for the Urban Poor to be renamed a month later as the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP). While the latter, suspended the payment of arrears and delinquency charges in NHA sponsored shelter projects in the TF and eight major resettlement sites for three years.ii A halt on demolitions was announced by the PCUP on July 1987 in a resolution otherwise known as the Tigil Gibaan, Tigil Tayuan (or Stop Demolition, Stop Construction) providing policies and guidelines on squatting and proscribing the arbitrary demolition of shanties existing on or before February 1986, the cut-off date after which all new squatter structures were banned.iii

Falling short of popular expectations, critical grassroots voices assailed the evasive character of these seemingly progressive reforms. The official version of popular empowerment through the creation of the PCUP was in practice simply limited to rank legitimation and speedy implementation of government policies and programs- Side-tracking popular demand for equal representation, urban poor representatives were barred entry into the PCUP top-brass, consisting of a chairman and four commissioners all of whom, according to executive order provisions, were to be handpicked by the president and were to serve at her pleasure. Democratic participation was further militated by the agencys power to accredit legitimate urban poor organisations, a mechanism which had according to critics been arbitrarily used to screen out hostile from friendly groups, thereby serving the functional objectives of control and co-optation. This relation is instructively dramatised in one typical case. In an interview, PCUP chairman, Mar Canonigo proudly claimed that in exceptional cases where demolition had to be sanctioned, it was undertaken on the basis of amicable settlement with the squatters as in Parola, Tondo, where families voluntarily moved. Denouncing the official version, Parolas militant local squatter organisation, Samahang Maralita (SM) contended in a letter to the president in March 1987 that demolition in Parola had been hitched on a dubious tripartite agreement between the agency, the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA or the land proprietor in this case) and KASAMA, the officially recognised community organisation. SM

leaders revealed that KASAMA officials were on the PPAs payroll and were handsomely remunerated to carry out so-called voluntary demolitions in the areas with agency imprimatur. Canonigo himself would later name KASAMAs head among the 6 syndicate ringleaders who had allegedly been victimising Metro-Manila squatters.iv Equally rejected was the official moratorium on debt repayment and demolitions. Refuted as a clone of the earlier reprieve granted by Marcos in 1984, the current three-year suspension on former debt repayments was designed to apply only if current debts would be settled and regular monthly amortisation paid. Should beneficiaries fail to pay for three consecutive months, former arrears would then be due and demandable, thereby forfeiting tenural rights and risking the penalty of eviction. Further, EO 84 required ditto to enter into a legal contract with the public housing authority (NHA) on or before February 1987, otherwise they would be considered squatters and face eviction accordingly. v Neither did the final declaration of the much-awaited demolition moratorium in 1987 enjoy a brass-band and red carpet welcome from squatter quarters, since this retroactively condemned those who erected their shanties after the February 1986 cut-off date to summary eviction, dashing in effect grassroots proposals that the period of effectivity should co-extend with the actual ratification of the PCUP resolution.vi Divisively indeed, these reforms soon created cracks with squatter ranks, eventually splitting the movement into contending pragmatic reformist and radical factions.

While state corporatist reforms and co-optive concessions were to an extent blunting grassroots solidarity, metropolitan squatters were feeling the razor-sharp edge of coercive vanguard strategies: eviction, relocation and resettlement programs. Shortly after clinching the

demolition moratorium, a one-year metro-wide squatter prevention and resettlement program (July 1987-June 1988) - an integral part of a largescale cleanliness, sanitation and beautification plan - were initiated by city authorities. This huge anti-squatter mopping operation targeting the relocation of more than 17,000 families from 116 priority areasvii and legally buttressed by the retention of previous authoritarian laws (e.g. PD 772 or the Anti-Squatting Law), was executed in often brutish and violent fashion by demolition crews escorted by heavily armed military and constabulary forces. Even more sinister was the apparent use of the anti-squatting drive as a convenient decoy for covert actions against alleged antigovernment dissidents in the communities, facilitated by the formation of the Police Community Relations Officer (PCRO), a civilian intelligence network in the citys 905 baranggays or wards, and the proliferation of paramilitary vigilante groups like the Manila Crusaders for Peace and Democracy (MCPD) armed and funded by the police and some local businessmen.viii As the dust from the eviction rampage settled, an estimated 50,000 families had by 1990 fallen prey to the wrought of the bulldozer campaigns. In contrast, according to the 1988 Accomplishment Report of the public housing authoritys Resettlement and Development Services

Department,

only

37,000

families

were

given

relocation

by

the

government between 1982-1988. A non-governmental source intimated that during the first half of 19909, only 191 of 2,702 evicted families were relocated. Besmirched by rampant violence, evictions under the Aquino regime claimed the death of 8 people, the shooting and injury of 226 and the arrest of no less than 230 civilians. The ferocious features of the campaigns sparked the tinder of renewed grassroots resistance and even drew the concern of Manilas conservative Cardinal Sin, who admonished restraint in the seemingly arbitrary conduct of official actions. Such actions, he warned, perilously flirt with a type of social upheaval from which there may be no recovery.ix Public outrage and strong pressures from the revitalised squatter movement reluctantly forced the forging of a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the metropolitan local governments, the Commission on Human Rights, the PCUP, NHA and five other state agencies, declaring yet another moratorium on eviction and demolition in mid-1990. President Aquino also promised to urge Congress to ratify a bill which would repeal the popularly vilified Anti-Squatting Law and decriminalise squatting. Both moves were instantly rejected from critical quarters as cosmetic exercises. Whereas exemptions written in the terms of the moratorium included sites considered to be traditional squatter turfs and where most of the citys squatter colonies were located,x the

congressional bill would only revoke PD 772 but not all other equally debilitating laws and decrees in existence. The bill moreover defines

squatting in much the same way as the previous laws (e.g. PD 1472 and LOI 19, which warrants the summary eviction of squatter communities without judicial order). Invoking the loophole-riddled memorandum, it was

unsurprisingly easy for the NHA, for instance, to earmark almost 40% of the citys 590 squatter communities with some one million dwellers for eviction before the end of 1991.xi And despite the lame-duck nature of the repealing bill, it had nevertheless struck a sensitive chord among the metropolitan mayors, private developers and landowners. Seeking the retention of the Anti-Squatting Law, the Real Estate Brokers of the Philippines (REBAP) and the Association of Subdivision Owners of Quezon City (ASOQC) argued that junking PD 772 would tolerate the proliferation of squatters and may lead to anarchy and violence in the depressed areas. Manilas mayor Lopez added that people would think that squatting is legal, and they would be encouraged to take over private and government lands.xii

Shelter and Land Delivery Skeletons in New Closet

Programs

Old

Parallel to the resurrection of the coercive strategies of yore, veteran shelter and delivery models were reincarnated by the Aquino regime in the manner suggested by the simile of putting old skeletons in a new closet. The new closet came in the form of institutional house cleaning and reorganisation of carryover

state housing agencies during Aquinos first year in office for the effective execution of a six-year National Shelter Program (NSP) beginning in 1986. This program sought to build 91,000 home units for 1987 and 246,000 by 1991. It would also promote the private sector as prime protagonist in housing production (including low-cost units), and primarily directed state involvement towards the provision of long-term house mortgage financing for low and middle income groups. Generally, direct state shelter production would be channelled to the lowest 30% of the urban income ladder through the NHA (via slum upgrading, squatter relocation, development of sites and services and construction of s-c core-housing units). After abolishing Imelda Marcos ignominious Ministry of Human Settlements, Aquino created the Housing and Urban Coordinating Council (HUDCC) to handle inter-agency

coordination. In 1987, the government home mortgage scheme, the Unified Home Lending Program (UHLP), NSPs vaunted linchpin, was introduced to oversee housing loans originated by the private sector, and administer and integrate various home buyers programs of pre-existing home financing agencies (SSS, GSIS, HDMF or Pagibig Fund). Foreign loans were expected to finance one-fourth of the total program budget (4.2 billion pesos).xiii The new closet provided by Aquinos institutional reform however essentially operated according to the biasses of the old formula and as such was subject to similar constraints. In terms of demand and supply, NSPs projected mass housing production pales in comparison with actual needs and the shelter backlog. Admittedly, HUDCC reported that

NSPs total output of almost 350,000 units between 1987-1990 was only a drop in the bucket of current housing requirement. The annual needs alone were estimated at 96,000 for Metro-Manila and over half a million for the entire country plus a formidable backlog of around 800,000 units. Decomposing this achievement down to socialised housing output for the avowed lowest 30% target, a minute 87,000 units were delivered by the NHA, which even included provision of sites and services and resettlement - a far cry from the 3.5 million squatter families theoretically falling under this income category. NHAs poor performance largely stem from low state subsidisation, which in turn was generally rooted in budgetary and fiscal constraints engendered by the current debt crisis.xiv Other venues for socialised housing, like the integrated government mortgage program, UHLP (devoting 60% of its funds to this sector), tended in reality to cater to groups other than low income earners. HUDCC documents indicated, for example, that close to 60% of UHLP borrowers belonged to the upper income crust, whereas 19% were reserved for the lowest 30%.xv Private developers, the officially celebrated prime movers, however, shied in practice away from socialised housing production simply due to low profit rates in this sector. Reminiscent of previous programs, the historical redundancy of prohibitive costs and affordability constraints involved in current marketoriented socialised shelter delivery had effectively fenced out the poor. According to the National Statistics Office (NSO), the lowest 30% of the countrys urban population allocated only a monthly average of 176 pesos

for housing, while the next 20% shelled out roughly 300 pesos. The corresponding figure for Metro-manilas 30% was approximated at 340 pesos. Cross-checking these figures with standard amortisation rates of 1,000 pesos per month for a socialised housing unit in a typical government project site in Quezon city gives us a vulgar mathematical picture of the affordability equation.xvi

The immediate cause of this mathematical discrepancy - i.e. relatively high state housing costs and interest rates bearing no consistent relationship with the paying capacity of low income consumers - was imputed by critics to the questionable official assumption on which delivery costs were predicated viz., that the lowest 30% could afford to spend 18% of household income for housing (equivalent to the official figures above). In fact their average monthly income of 1,168 pesos was even less than the official subsistence minimum of 2,200 pesos.xvii In strategic and structural terms, stringent requirements on cost of recovery imposed by creditors like the World Bank (funding a large part of past and present state housing programs) on the Philippine government compel the latter to pass on repayment commitments to the target consumers in the shape of high interest rates.xviii Then and now, the official practices of trading collective goods like public housing to lubricate patronage and secure allegiance among politically strategic groups further mitigate against shelter delivery for

the poor. For example, during the height of savage eviction campaigns and political instability following several frustrated military coup attempts in late 1987, public housing officials spectacularly announced that 75% of the 250,000 strong Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) would be accommodated in official shelter projects. In a social housing project in Paranaque, the NHA awarded the units to police and teachers while it simply reserved slum improvement projects for the poor.xix Paradoxically, the current recession in the public housing market was sharply contrasted by the construction boom in the private

real estate development market. Basically isolated to Metro-Manila, where 72% of total construction took place, this boom was spurred off by the anticipated turnover of Hongkong to the Peoples Republic of China in 1997. The impending turnover had sent a wave of rich Hongkong residents and corporate groups to Manila in search for alternative sites for investment and permanent residence, creating a lucrative market for residential and commercial condominiums, exclusive hotels and posh subdivision complexes. While the boom had drawn big time private realty developers, constructors, real estate agents and landowners farther away from public housing markets and into the greener pastures of high cost housing development catering to foreign investors and tourists, it simultaneously triggered off skyrocketing land prices, increasing by almost 800% in prime residential and commercial areas in Manila - thus doubly jeopardising the plight of the poor. It is quite interesting to note that while the appointed prime movers of state shelter delivery were energetically fabricating exclusive homes for the rich, city authorities were equally escalating eviction efforts. For instance, on a reclaimed area at Manila Bay sold by the government to a Taiwanese corporation with plans to develop the property into a modern commercial and residential enclave, 17,000 squatters were evicted of which only 2,000 were accommodated in a nearby resettlement site.xx Ultimately, shelter delivery snags in past as well as present programs were axiomatically linked to the unreformed state of urban landownership structures accounting for speculative land prices and

putting urban land and by extension decent shelter far beyond the reach of impoverished squatters. Notwithstanding previous land reforms, land poverty amid land plenty continued to constitute one of the most explosive urban issues. It had remained to be a lingering aphorism, exacerbated still by the absence of laws that would regulate land costs, by government failure or lack of political will to intercede decisively on behalf of the squatters in negotiations with landowners coupled with state

reluctance to use expropriation prerogatives. While urban land reform as sine qua non for sustainable housing delivery had been on Aquinos early political agenda, it took five years before the government was finally able to ratify an urban land reform law, and only after relentless pressures from grassroots quarters. However, the basic fabric of the act contains the warp and weft of its predecessors, making it just as innocuous a tool in restructuring landed property relations in favour of the poor. Consequently, popular flack had been levelled against a number of the current reforms cryptical provisions. Firstly, the reform subjected land identification only to existing national planning standards which in fact do not provide land for the homeless. These were state policies and land use plans that hardly ensured land for shelter needs. Land valuation for socialised housing would be executed on the basis of market value. Secondly, it effectively shut the door on a wide segment of the urban population by: Disqualifying those who had not established permanent residency for at least five years prior to the date of registration

of beneficiaries. It tended to exclude the poor by applying the broad definition of professional squatters, which in principle included all squatters (e.g. individuals who unlawfully occupy lands not belonging to them without the express consent of the landowner and who had sufficient income for legitimate housing). Thirdly, it condoned demolitions in much the same manner and under similar conditions as those earlier established by the 1990 Memorandum on Agreement, exempting the traditional loci of squatter communities (danger zones, infrastructure development sites, etc. ) from the demolition moratorium. It thus endorsed evictions mandated by court orders and existing anti-squatting legislation,xxi laws familiarly prejudicial to squatter interests to begin with. Vengefully indeed old skeletons rattled in the Aquino regimes urban management closet! How the squatters did try to resolve the urban crisis and defaulting state delivery of collective consumption goods like shelter and other scarce resources and thus reclaim urban social space denied them, will be the focal point of the next two penultimate chapters.

Notes

iRojas, 1987: 5-13. iiAMAWIM, Oct-Dec 1987: 8-14. iiiPCUP, 1987 report: 9-10. ivAMAWIM, April 1988: 1-10. vEarlier in 1984, Marcos issued PD 1923 which also granted amnesty on the payment of delinquency arrears as of 1984 and those who paid delinquency interest were credited to deduct such payment from the balance on their principal accounts. EO 84 merely provides for reprieve on the collection of amortisation arrearage and delinquency interests due and demandable as of December 1986 provided that beneficiaries pay in full their respective accounts for January 1987 on or before February 1987 and maintain their accounts regularly up to date thereafter. And according to Butalid, both recent and old laws were apparently designed to lure delinquent awardees (with titles of occupancy) acknowledging their being parties to a unilateral contract and was a desperate gimmick to collect payment of debt, as overdue interest on World Bank housing loans, the rates of which were far beyond their paying capacities in the first place. Butalid in AMAWIM, Oct-Dec 1987: 8-14. For a critical discussion and comparison of these laws, see also AMAWIM, July-Spet 1987: 23-24; Tri-Sectoral Workshop on NHA Policies, 1989. viAMAWIM, Oct-Dec 1987: 11. viiIBON, Sept 1987: 3. viiiManilas Wester District Chief of Police disclosed in 1987 that around 1,500 individuals had been screened and accepted in his precinct to undergo training as MCPD members who would be entitled to a personal accident insurance complements of some concerned businessmen. According to another official, the latter also pledged to donate 80 cars to be used by the MCPD. AMAWIM, June 1988: 9. ixAMAWIM, 1990: 1, 9. (Issue?) xExemptions to the moratorium included evictions covered by court order; those sanctioned by the PCUP and NHA; shanties obstructing government public works and development projects and those blocking access to public areas or located in danger zones, etc. AMAWIM, 1990: 2. xiPhilippine News and Features, Nov 11 1990: 2-3. xiiAMAWIM, 1990: 4.(? issue) xiiiThe NSP was launched through Executive Order 90 issued by Aquino in December 1986 whereby organisational and functional components were defined and identified. UHLP, kicked off in 1987, was designed with an index-linked credit rate on loans proportionally adjusted to income class. Higher interest rates on high income borrowers would cross-subsidise lower rates for the low income bracket. UHLP was placed under the direction of the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation (NHMFC). AMAWIM, April-June, 1987: 5-6; AMAWIM, July, 1988: 5; IBON, 1987: 3. xivOf the 8 billion pesos spent for the shelter program in 1987, only 1.2 billion emanated from the national budget allocated through the NHA, while defence and foreign debt servicing devoured more than half that years budget. AMAWIM I q, 1991: 2.S xvAMAWIM I, 1991, ibid; AMAWIM (issue?), 1990: 9. xviDate not provided by the literature but the data are presumably 1990-1991 figures. AMAWIM 1, 1991, ibid. xviiIBON, 1987: 3. xviiiAMAWIM 1, 1991: 3-4. xixAMAWIM, July 1988: 4-7. xxAMAWIM I, 1991: 5-7. xxiAMAWIM II, 1991: 1-4.