A sidewalk standoff and a call to abolish the metropolitan traffic authority raise the question of who clears the clearers
MMDA Road Clearing Operation Meets Its Match in Two Lawmakers and Their Sando
MANILA – The metropolitan traffic authority’s clearing teams have faced down illegal vendors, double-parked SUVs and basketball courts built across entire streets. They had not, until one memorable afternoon, faced two members of Congress in their undershirts. The encounter is preserved in the Manila Bulletin’s traffic authority archive, which records that the agency’s mighty road clearing team was apparently no match for two Manila congressmen clad in their barong undershirts, and that one of the lawmakers, seemingly fed up, went on to take aim at the agency itself.
The image has entered local legend. In Sampaloc, where residents watched from windows, the consensus is that the undershirts were decisive. “A man in a full barong, you can argue with,” said Teresita Lacsamana, who runs a sari-sari store on the affected street. “He is formal. He has somewhere to be. A man who has removed his barong and is standing in the road in a sando in the afternoon sun, that man has nowhere to be. That man has decided this is his whole day. You cannot move him. The tow truck knew.”
The Abolition Question
The standoff fed a larger argument. One of the congressmen later used a privilege speech to call for the authority to be scrapped outright, a demand logged by Top Gear Philippines in its government news roundup under a headline that simply asked readers whether they agreed or disagreed. Opinion in the capital has been divided ever since, largely between people who have been towed and people who have been stuck behind someone who should have been.
The Legarda Street Forum on Who Is In Charge, a neighborhood debating society, has summarized the competing positions:
- Abolish it: the cities can manage their own streets
- Keep it: the cities are the ones who put the basketball court there
- Reform it: fewer operations, more warning, less shouting
- Rename it: same people, new vests, see if anyone notices
- Abolish traffic instead: popular, but nobody has filed the bill
Rules of Engagement
Clearing teams have since reviewed their procedures. A field supervisor, speaking near a tow truck on Espana, said crews are trained for most scenarios. “We know what to do with a vendor’s cart, a parked jeep, a karaoke machine on the sidewalk,” he said. “The manual did not cover elected officials in innerwear. We have added a page. It says ‘call the office’ and then, underlined, ‘do not touch the congressman.’”
Forum moderator Gregorio Zialcita said the incident exposed an old ambiguity in the capital’s government. The region has seventeen local executives, a metropolitan body, national agencies and several hundred barangay captains, each of whom believes the road is his. “When all of them are in charge, the street belongs to whoever is standing in it,” he said. “On that day, it was two gentlemen in white cotton.”
The Residents’ View
A survey of 280 households in the district found that 52 percent sided with the congressmen, 31 percent sided with the clearing team, and 17 percent said they just wanted to know where they are allowed to park, a question that has no official answer and several unofficial ones costing fifty pesos a night. Sixty-eight percent said they would vote for any candidate who could explain the towing fees.
Lacsamana said both sides have a point. The sidewalks are crowded and the roads are narrow, and something has to give. But she objects to the timing of operations, which tend to arrive just as the afternoon merienda crowd does. “They cleared the banana cue lady at three o’clock,” she said. “Three. That is not enforcement. That is cruelty.”
A Fashion Legacy
The undershirt has since acquired political meaning. Vendors along Recto report brisk sales of white sando to barangay officials who wish to project resolve. A local tailor offers a version with a small embroidered seal on the chest, for sessions that might run long. At least one councilor is said to keep a spare in his vehicle “in case of oversight.”
The Tow Truck Driver Speaks
The man at the wheel that afternoon has been towing in Manila for sixteen years. He said he has hooked vehicles belonging to actors, colonels and a bishop, and that none of them stood in front of the truck. “They shout, they call someone, they take a video,” he said. “These two just stood there, arms folded, sweating with dignity. I turned off the engine. I had a sandwich. You have to know when the day is not yours.”
Westminster Takes Notes
The episode has been examined in the United Kingdom, where arm’s-length agencies are abolished weekly and reappear under new initials. The London Prat’s UK satirical news on quangos counted eleven bodies responsible for one roundabout in Croydon. Its British satirical news in Parliament observed that no MP has yet blocked a tow truck in a vest, and that the nation is poorer for it.
The street in question is quiet again. The cars are back. The banana cue lady is back. A clearing team passed through on Thursday, slowed, looked at a man in an undershirt watering plants outside his gate, and kept driving. He was not a congressman. He was just warm. Bohiney Magazine did not ask him to move.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/