Of rights and opportunities

Everybody is ganging up on the University of the Philippines for quickly fencing off a piece of property that suddenly got cleared of settlers by a fire. The school owns the property and had long wanted to recover it. The fire gave it the chance to do so.

This is not the first time a similar incident has happened. Time and again, we have seen properties that have been taken over by people who do not own them suddenly cleared by fires and their real owners fencing them off to finally recover what were theirs in the first place.

Of course, suspicions always arise after these incidents that the fires were deliberately set off in order to finally recover properties after the normal processes to recover them either failed or proceeded so slowly as to defeat the purpose of the owners in needing to recover them.

Arson is a terrible crime. But like all crimes, they need to be proven. Unfortunately, there have been few, if at all, instances in which arson was proven. In almost all incidents, the fires got forgotten after initial investigations. And the owners got back their properties.

Now, in the absence of any proof that the UP deliberately set off the fire that cleared its property of settlers, it is unfair to stop it from recovering what it rightfully owns, especially if all previous efforts to recover it went nowhere in the bureaucratic maze.

To be sure, the settlers, as human beings, have certain inalienable rights. But there being no absolute right, these must be tempered by and measured against the rights of others, in this case the owner.

Now, if in the processes of determining whose rights should prevail, or failing that, in determining a common ground, it takes too long that God eventually intervenes, then it is only logical that the act of God should be propitiously taken advantage of promptly.

Unless deliberately set off, fire must be understood as an act of God, and could be seen as the answer to an issue for which the normal human processes have probably failed to resolve within a reasonable length of time.

Yet, unlike other similar fires that saw a similar unintended recovery of property taken over by others, none has generated so much controversy and protest as this one involving the UP property.

I was initially perplexed until I realized who the personalities were. First there were the usual cause-oriented groups. No problem with that since that is the nature of their being. But then there, too, are the politicians, including those who have been at each other's throats.

And then I realized that, aahh, hapit na man diay ang election. No wonder the politicians descended on the issue. It was a campaign platform begging to be occupied, with the sides to the issue being clearly defined.

The UP is an institution. In an issue exploding in the cusp of an election season, it is doomed to stand alone. It cannot go out and vote. Those who occupied its land, on the other hand, are several hundred warm bodies made miserable by a terrible accident. They await commiseration.

So into that tempting role strode the politicians, their bleeding hearts worn prominently on their sleeves, their crocodile tears streaming from their eyes. I could be wrong, of course. In the scheme of all things, I still believe the genuineness of human compassion survives.

But they sure picked the wrong time to cradle sympathy against their breasts. Election time is a time of scrutiny and suspicion. Besides, a problem that could have been resolved in the level spaces of due process need not spill out into the streets and before the cameras.