EDITORIAL - Anarchy

There must be millions of Filipinos who lack decent housing or literally live in the streets. But they don’t go around occupying empty houses, whether privately owned or built by the government.

Each state-owned mass housing project is intended for a particular set of beneficiaries. There are rules that must be followed and criteria that must be met to qualify for the mass housing. Such rules and criteria are laid down to prevent a stampede among those millions who need decent shelter.

Occupying the houses isn’t even needed to dramatize the lack of decent shelter and highlight poverty in this developing country. All Filipinos are aware of these problems, which are evident in many of the neighborhoods in Metro Manila.

No one can miss the street dwellers in the metropolis, some of whom knock on car windows to beg for alms. They sleep in the open along Manila’s Baywalk and under bridges. Shanties line riverbanks. Those street dwellers and informal settlers would love to have those houses in Bulacan so casually occupied by about 1,000 members of the urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap.

Red banners at the housing projects show the ideological leanings of the illegal occupants, indicating that housing is not the principal objective of their action. President Duterte, who has bent over so far backwards he’s about to fall over to accommodate the demands of the communists, should send word to his friends in the insurgency and left-leaning groups to respect the rules of his government. He can send the former rebels in his Cabinet to reason with their ideological brethren.

The President has often said that poverty is no excuse to push illegal drugs or commit other crimes. The same can be said of the illegal occupation of government mass housing. This is not the exercise of a right; it’s anarchy.