Caloocan

Strange things always happen in Caloocan.

When we were kids in the neighboring town of Malabon, our parents regularly warned us about crossing over into Caloocan. In our young minds, we imagined it was a place that teemed with tough guys, warlords, peddlers of vice, petty criminals and other malevolent characters. It was the armpit of the metropolis. Anyone who ventured into its boundaries puts himself at risk.

Being young and foolish, we forayed into the city anyway, forgetting what our parents warned us about. We explored the dirty wonders this eternally mismanaged city had to offer.

Needless to say, we paid the price for our youthful stupidity. The only time I was actually held up in my life, complete with a sharp knife pressed against my young neck, was in Caloocan, close to where the old PNR hospital use to be.

My most terrified moment also happened in this city. That was when, on a rainy afternoon before martial rule was proclaimed, brimming with misplaced ardor, we decided to march into Caloocan to protest some incident of violence perpetrated by the ruling warlords there, carrying only our red banners. As we passed the Chinese cemetery, thugs emerged from behind the high walls and rained arrows on us. Yes, arrows, with rusty hooked arrowheads, fired from slingshots. That was the weapon of choice of the gangs of thugs who roamed that city.

I ran for my life, the fastest I ever did in my reckoning. I ran, clutching my red banner, until I had safely crossed the boundary into the City of Manila.

I have never since strolled Caloocan’s streets again with nay sense of leisure.

My deeply ingrained prejudice against this city was revived once more last Friday. On the evening news, I caught footage of scenes one might imagine came out of Beirut in the worst days of the civil war that tore Lebanon apart. About 200 private security guards, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, were trying to protect a mall against the onslaught of latter-day thugs apparently sent in by the Caloocan mayor’s office.

For some reason, anyone who becomes mayor of this bizarre city transforms into a petty tyrant. There is something about being king of the capital region’s armpit that transforms the men installed at the throne.

It turns out, the Ever Gotesco Mall at the Monumento rotunda has caught the fancy of the Caloocan city officials. That is not good news.

The owners of that mall had an agreement with then Mayor Asistio to purchase the building that housed it for almost three decades now. When Mayor Malonzo succeeded Asistio, the agreement was overturned. Gotesco’s owners went to court.

Last year, Gotesco finally won the court case it filed against the city. On September 19 last year, Gotesco Investment Inc. and the city of Caloocan, applying the court’s ruling, signed a memorandum of agreement detailing the mode of payment by which the mall owners would settle the sale. That seemed to be that. A sale was consummated. Gotesco would now own the real property on which it has operated for many years.

Then the city government’s attitude suddenly changed. Caloocan filed a motion for reconsideration on the Manila court ruling that commanded the city to conclude the sale earlier agreed upon. That motion was denied.

The city government then sought a writ of possession from the Caloocan RTC even as the case has, for years, been handled by the co-equal Manila RTC. Of course, the city managed to secure that writ of possession and promptly tried to enforce it by physically occupying the mall.

Before that attempt to occupy the mall, the city government claimed that Gotesco owed it a total of P722.3 million in real property taxes covering the 23 years the mall was in operation. That is a strange claim, considering that the mall actually became owner of the property on which it stands only September last year. In fact, that September deal is being contested by the City when it sought a writ of possession from another, friendlier, court.

Applying the writ of possession that it acquired from the hometown court, the city government acted with incredible haste. The city government terminated the contract with the security agency hired by the mall to protect the property. City officials approached the locators at the Gotesco mall, asking them to register their operations with the city. The people of Mayor Echiverri went around offering mall stalls to other possible locators.

Why the undue haste, the change in the city government’s attitude and the strong-arm tactics now being applied to force the mall’s closure?

There are rumors that another giant mall operator wanted the location and must have enticed the city government into making that possible.

Gotesco’s lawyer publicly announced that the city officials have tried to extort money from the mall to fund their 2010 campaigns. Failing in that effort, they are now looking for others, presumably more generous, to operate the mall. We have no way of verifying the lawyer’s claim.

At any rate, the city government’s shift in attitude towards the mall was, indeed, abrupt and strange. The reason for such abrupt shift in attitude, one suspects, can only be unseemly.

This confrontation between the Gotesco Mall and the Caloocan City government illustrates the ugly side of the devolution of power to local governments. In the wrong hands, the powers local governments enjoy may be abused — to the detriment of a predictable environment for business.