Articles
UP Diliman Policy on Squatters in Campus
Many “correct” thinking individuals would actually cringe at the use of the term “squatters” instead of the politically correct: “informal settlers.” But here’s the rub. If we continue to treat as dogma the “politically-correct lines” laid out decades past by people we never knew, what logically follows is that we are paralyzed by our own prejudice. If, however, we take a hard look at the reality before us, we begin a creative process of addressing a problem that is inherently exponential and stands to overwhelm this University in just a few more years.
Cruz na Ligas in one corner of the UPD campus and the Pael Compound in another are squatter-ridden university property. But do the houses in these areas fit the classic profile of used lumber and rusted GI sheets that leak and tilt in the rain and tug at our bleeding heart sensibilities?
Cruz na Ligas was first squatted on date or year here during the First Quarter Storm by some of our distinguished alumni. The Pael Compound is as old as the Roberto Pael vs. UP case filed in date here, which the Supreme Court resolved in date here in favor of the validity of UP’s title. The litigation (ojo: referring to the start of the case or the SC hearing?) began in 1993.
What is to prevent Daang Tubo, Pechayan, San Vicente, Palaris, Dagohoy, Botocan, Ricarte, Libis, Mabilog, C.P. Garcia, Lambak and Kabute, Villages 11, 14 and 17—home to over 20,000 squatter families occupying roughly 66 hectares of University land—from eventually turning into a Cruz na Ligas or a Pael Compound in a few years time?
In 2004, the Quezon City Mayor’s Office supported a draft Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) submitted to the Office of the UP President for possible onsite development and/or obligating UP to provide relocation areas within campus in the event demolition becomes necessary. The MOA was prepared by who or what organization and short description of organization. UP is exempted from the Lina Law, which declares a moratorium on demolition until relocation could be provided but sought to control the further proliferation of squatters as well. Said law also criminally penalizes the heads of local government units and barangays for allowing squatter intrusion within their respective areas of jurisdiction.The MOA therefore attempts to create a contractual obligation for relocation in the absence of a legal obligation imposed by law.
Come the elections, 20,000 families converged in one highly accessible area at UPD is any politician’s dream come true.
Another inescapable fact is that land will always have a market value simply because it is an increasingly finite resource in urban areas. The barong-barong we had left unattended in the 1970s and the 1980s was commodified by market forces so that with each transfer of ownership, it has increased its market value until eventually, it approximated prevailing real estate market values, notwithstanding that the land on which it stands has been indefinitely reserved by law exclusively for education and education-related uses. In 2005, the same site (ojo: referring to?) has evolved into a three-story commercial building in the heart of Cruz na Ligas, which has secured a building permit from City Hall despite the fact that it stands on squatted land.
The “rights” to a lot in San Vicente along University Avenue and Pechayan, Old Capitol Site at the Arboretum ranges anywhere from P40,000 to P50,000, as gathered by UPD’s Task Force on Anti-Squatting, and as admitted by the Pechayan squatters themselves. Anyone who can afford this “right” can certainly afford a more permanent structure. Thus, the barong-barong is now a 50 sq. m. hollow-block affair and soon after an extension will be built for the son who recently got married; who will eventually move into a separate structure upon the birth of the first two children; and so on and so forth as Filipino families are wont to do.
In 2000 when the Commission on Higher Education first publicly announced its intention to build in the corner of University Avenue and C.P. Garcia Street, there were only 44 squatter-families. Five years later, after inter-agency committee negotiations with Barangay Officials, QC officials and affected squatter families, the 44 families blossomed into 166 families, notwithstanding the criminal liability attached by the Lina Law to barangay officials’ acts of allowing squatters to enter their jurisdiction after the statutory cut off period in 1992.
How did all these barangays on UPD acquire their status as such?
Martial Law declared the existence of citizen’s assemblies for the specific purpose of ratifying the legal superstructure that would support consolidation of political power. Later, these assemblies became barangays for election of representatives to the rubber stamp Batasang Pambansa. The local government code of 1983 and 1992 sought to regulate the mushrooming of baranggays by prescribing a minimum number of residents and the Commission on Elections’ plebiscites to involve the affected residents in deciding whether a new barangay could be carved out of the existing political landscape (ojo: resulted in what?). By that time, however, the five barangays within UPD were securely in place by virtue of the Ordinance appended to the 1987 Constitution which created the 4th District of Quezon City to include: Brgys. Cruz na Ligas, San Vicente, UP Campus, Old Capitol Site and Botocan.” In 1992, the Lina law was passed.
At UPD, the barangays have consistently insisted on their right to pursue the development of their barangay notwithstanding the fact that their constituents are transient squatters on public land exclusively reserved for educational purposes. Barangays would secure funding from lower house pork barrel funds and have Sanggunian Resolutions passed supporting its assertion of political jurisdiction in matters such as building multi-purpose halls on UPD property already planned for other uses. Other barangays were more diplomatic in adopting a modus vivendi with University authorities.
And what of the 152 members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) who are reported by the Office of Community Relations to be squatting on campus land, themselves inspiring both fear and awe among their own neighbors who rely on their armed influence to deter demolition? The Agreement between the UP and the Department of Interior and Local Governments (DILG) banning police forces from the campus has been respected for the past 30 years since the First Quarter Storm with the single exception of squatter PNP/AFP residing on campus.
If there are those of us who cringe at the use of the term “squatters,” whatever are they to do when “professional squatting syndicates” are plugged into the discussion?
The Lina law defines professional squatters as: “individuals or groups who occupy lands without the express consent of the landowner and who have sufficient income for legitimate housing. The term shall also apply to persons who have previously been awarded homelots or housing units by the Government but who sold, leased or transferred the same to settle illegally in the same place or in another urban area, and non-bona fide occupants and intruders of lands reserved for socialized housing.”
Section 27 of the same statute provides:
Section 27. Action against professional squatters and squatter syndicates -- The local government units, in cooperation with the Philippine National Police, the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP) and the PCUP-accredited urban poor organization in the area, shall adopt measures to identify and effectively curtail the nefarious and illegal activities of professional squatters and squatting syndicates.
Any person or group identified as such shall be summarily evicted and their dwellings or structures demolished; and shall be disqualified to avail of the benefits of the Program. A public official who tolerates or abets the commission of the above-mentioned acts shall be dealt with in accordance with existing laws.
Section 28. Eviction and Demolition. Eviction or demolition as a practices shall be discouraged. Eviction or demolition, however, may be allowed under the following situations:
(a) when persons or entities occupy danger areas such as esteros … and other public places such as sidewalks, roads, parks and playgrounds;
(b) when government infrastructure projects with available funding are about to be implemented xxxx
Sec. 30. Prohibition against new illegal structures. It shall be unlawful for any person to construct any structures in areas mentioned in the preceding section.
After the effectivity of this Act, the barangay, municipal or city government units shall prevent the construction of any kind of illegal dwelling units or structures within their respective localities. The head of any local government concerned who allows, abets, or otherwise tolerates the construction of any structure in violation of this section shall be liable to administrative sanctions under existing laws and penal sanctions provided for in this Act.
The muslim interlopers who occupied the Arboretum from February 22 to July 3 in 2003 were declared a professional squatting syndicate operation by the Presidential Task Force on Anti-Squatting and Squatter Syndicates, a Malacañang-created multi-agency task force composed of the Commission on Urban Poor, the HUDCC (spell out), the National Housing Authority, among others. Interviews with occupants revealed that subdivided lots were bought by predominantly Maranao businessmen upon reliance on the TRO issued by Branch 222, QC RTC. Despite the illegal TRO, UP was able to evict the well-financed, culturally homogenous and armed operation by virtue of an order of eviction issued by the said Task Force.
If UP is unable to evict, it sends a wrong signal (ojo: what does the signal state?) It may also allow unscrupulous businessmen to make small investments in the installation of communities of squatters in publicly held land that they will have eventually privatized by exploiting said inability.
UP, known to its constitutents as the University of the Poor, is thus captive of its own self-destructive advocacies. Measly-salaried as its faculty and staff are, they still manage to get robbed in broad daylight; students get periodically held-up and are feebly advised to walk in large groups; but UP does not dare accuse the informal settlers because it just is not politically correct. Students scream “commercialization” at the Board of Regents as it maps out resource generation strategies that lease out land but in so doing, unwittingly expose and alienate prime properties to squatter syndicates, land speculators and petty power brokers.
Ironically, the squatters themselves will be first to acknowledge the debt of gratitude they owe the University for all the years they were provided safe haven. They will also be first to express concern over the complications arising from exponential growth within their areas. But they are, by virtue of their relative poverty and notwithstanding their efforts at self-organization, still transients with transitory dispositions. It would therefore be unwise to enter into agreements with them despite the patronage of Quezon City Hall. If we enter into agreement with one group for onsite development, what is to prevent another group or even break-away elements of the same group from taking over another six hectares somewhere else within campus?
For it is also a fact that City Hall and squatter communities’ combined interests are still short-term and narrow, their political horizon demarcated by election year in 2007 and a not much longer term of office thereafter; whereas this University’s interests will easily outlive us all and foresee-ably impact upon, if not shape, the cultural, social, economic and political landscape for generations to come. Education is enshrined in the Constitution as an invaluable resource for development but its propulsion is nowhere more forcefully generated than from within this premiere state university.
What is the financial and social cost of tolerating separatist political enclaves within our severely budget-constrained jurisdiction? What is the sense of tax-payers money allocated to UP and also to the barangay insofar as their territories and services overlap? What is the impact of these competing interests on the day-to-day academic performance of our faculty and students? Does anyone have the right, in law or in fact, to compromise the material basis that supports the environment necessary to sustain the HOPE we sing of in the UP Anthem?
More often than not the answers are not half as important as the questions. Difficult decisions must be made. Self-imposed obstructions are perhaps inevitable among scholars but it only results in paralysis. On the other hand, no government will defeat its own raison d’etré by admitting that poverty is here to stay; much less asking UP to house and be host to it. The academic community therefore needs only to make itself heard on a matter of self-preservation which is, by any reasonable standard or political inclination, a call for Nationalism of the highest order.
What the administration proposes are: i. that demolitions be accepted, if not supported, by the academic community as a politically correct option given the afore-discussed result of decades of ambivalence; ii. that these be conducted in the most humane manner possible; iii. that we rule out relocation, on site development and other negotiating stances that alienate land and violate the UP Charter; and iv. that there be planning done to remove the academic core from security agencies’ primary responsibility by exploring the option of developing auxillary security brigades/building aides attached to the Colleges/Units and re-engineering the UPDP so that eventually the agencies guard the access gates, the peripheral areas and only secondarily, the academic core.
In addition, joint property inventory conducted by the Security Agencies and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Community Affairs that will census the current squatter occupants shall be enforced and maintained by the agencies on pain of hefty fines to pre-empt migration to other UP sites of those subjected to demolition. The DILG/NAPOLCOM (National Police Command ) shall be asked to investigate and remediate the PNP squatters while the AFP/JAGO (spell out) shall be asked to do the same for the AFP squatters. The Ombudsman will be asked to investigate barangay officials’ liability through passive toleration or active participation as squatter syndicates. As for our employees who are squatting, let us declare a temporary exemption for them and explore avenues for additional housing facilities while enforcing the housing rules more strictly to liberate all illegally occupied units.
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