Former social welfare secretary Dinky Soliman once blabbered that there was no law prohibiting squatters from occupying or living on the center islands—implying that those stretches of real estate are public property, ergo, available for public use.
Given such official idiocy from someone of national stature and the apparent lack of will on the part of law enforcers to clear those center islands of such menace and nuisance, squatters now think they own those islands.
Stephen Monsanto’s complaint about Mayor Herbert Bautista’s failure to have the unsightly shanties removed from the center islands of city streets “just a kilometer or so away from City Hall” (“QC taxpayers hornswoggled—again,” Opinion, 12/27/16) was thus misdirected. Bautista cannot be held responsible for everything that has gone bad in Quezon City—because, quite often, he was out of the country, see?
To her very last day in office, Soliman never took back what she said, and squatters have been using her words against any lesser mortals trying to remove them from those priceless, precious prime lots. The current social welfare secretary should have that stupid statement obliviated—never to be heard again—so that the equally stupid law enforcers can no longer use that excuse ever for not doing their job.
DINO M. CAPISTRANO, dmcaps0210@gmail.com