The realities behind "Ate Glo�s concern" for the urban poor
Macapagal-Arroyo has deodorized herself as "Ate Glo" who is supposedly full of concern for the poor, challenged as she was by the fact that throngs of pro-Estrada forces were paid and deceived to be mobilized for the so-called EDSA 3 and the May 1 attack on Malaca�ang. She has thus issued a token directive granting titles to lands in urban poor communities in Metro Manila and Mindanao. At the same time, Macapagal-Arroyo boasted about her pledges regarding housing, livelihood projects and other services for the impoverished in her so-called "consultations with the poor".
Behind this, however, the Macapagal-Arroyo regime has been conducting large-scale demolitions in urban poor communities. In a very short span of time, more than 18,000 families had lost their houses. A partial list of the areas targetted includes Malabon, Balintawak and Tondo in Metro Manila. It was the housing agencies themselves that ordered the demolitions. Police and hired goons indiscriminately perpetrated violations of human rights against the poor. It would not be farfetched to say that Macapagal-Arroyo would likely surpass the ousted regime's record for the year 2000 in terms of the number of victims and the level of violence in demolitions.
July 12: Up to 50 urban poor residents were injured in a violent demolition in Malabon. A man and three women, one of them pregnant, were arrested by the police. Those arrested were among the residents who resisted the attempts of the demolition team and elements of PNP Substation 2 led by Chief Supt. Pablo Aquino to raze hundreds of houses within the allegedly private Gozon Compound along Letre Road, Barangay Tonsuya.
June 28: Armed policemen and demolition team members tore down the houses of about 500 families in Barangay Catmon, Malabon. The residents had for some time been paying P300 a month to the title holder of the land they had been occupying. The local government did not even offer them a temporary place to stay, contrary to provisions of the reactionary system's own laws.
June 19: A demolition team from the National Housing Authority itself along with policemen razed houses in Smokey Mountain in Barrio Madaragat, Balic-Balic, Tondo. They harassed, beat up, jailed and even robbed the residents who resisted.
March 5 and 9: Troops from the Task Force Control, Prevention and Removal of Illegal Structures and Squatting demolished houses along Old Samson Road, Balintawak, Quezon City. Five children died of measles after being deprived of shelter.
It will be recalled that thousands of people, among them women and children, were brutalized by elements of the Philippine Army, Marines and SWAT-PNP in urban poor communities in Manila, Malabon, Navotas and Caloocan in the early part of May. Residents were cordoned in, attacked, terrorized and illegally arrested by the troopers. These measures were conducted side by side with pursuit operations against pro-Estrada forces who joined the May 1 attack on Malaca�ang.
The hungry bellies of the toiling masses can never be filled by any amount of courtship or deception by any reactionary posing as their champion without resolving the roots of their poverty. It is the entirety of the semicolonial and semifeudal system in the country that is the reason behind the existence of millions of urban poor and their continually growing number. Only its overthrow and the attainment of national liberation and democracy for the people's benefit, especially the toiling masses, can solve the problems of the poor.
| 
