Sheriff & Mayor Sara

My friends & I who have been working with the poor for decades now are, of course, on the side of Sara, our city mayor, who expressed her anger & indignation in a violent punching incident with a court sheriff executing a writ of demolition.

Barrio Soliman, ( now called Kapitan Tomas), site of the recent Davao City demolition was one of the first development sites of our own women’s center (PILIPINA Legal Resources Center) in 1984: those who came before us did community organizing & community based legal literacy there. So, it pains when spirits are demolished.

That is why a mayor using personal or official power to look at the plight of the poor is a renaissance of sorts & a powerful force to reckon with. Our social institutions are weak and not able to address so much poverty & social inequality.

The video which was aired relentlessly on television & painted a thousand words and comments in social media focused on the punching and so I said on Facebook: “The punching video missed the most important context : informal settlers stoning the demolition team to death. The sheriff ignored the oral command of the mayor to wait for a few hours. Why can't a sheriff wait? The mayor is chief executive of the city and in command. There is such a thing as reasonable force in defense of rights of "strangers," & citizens. More positive force Mayor Sara! 

The bigger picture that crystallized before our eyes: is due process.
The urban poor issues that we have worked for over two decades suddenly became the talk of the entire wired nation.
Our national campaign for a paradigm shift from ““right to housing “ to “right to the city” is potentially now a “brand.” It is a campaign that each of us has a stake in the survival & future of our city.
The city is for us and for our future generation.
As of last census, Davao City has a population of 1.28 million or 241, 509 households & growing at 2.8 per cent.

The Davao City housing backlog is 40,000 and 30% of all households belong to the informal housing sector according to the Shelter Development Framework Plan of the city. According to the Davao City Planning & Development Office, there are about one hundred fifty two (152) squatter colonies & very visible as an urban blight at a glance when airborne and from Davao gulf. We are the largest city in the world but just in area because only 35% of the total population occupy the 4% of the total land area of the city. Davao city’s vulnerable sectors are women, children, the elderly, the tribals and persons with disability.

But let me go back to defending Mayor Sara. Her action is defensible when put in social context. For this, I will defer to one of the founders of our center, lawyer Emelina Quintillan who said, & I quote

“Her act could be justified as impelled by passion & obfuscation.
 In defense of Mayor Sara Duterte, I found this ruling on an administrative case against a sheriff of the Metropolitan Court in Pasig. In Malmis v. Bungabong, the Court explained the proper conduct that sheriffs must exercise when performing their functions, “ viz:

"While it is true that sheriffs must comply with their mandated ministerial duty to serve court writs, execute all processes and carry into effect all court orders promptly and expeditiously, it needs to be pointed out that this ministerial duty is not without limitation.

In the performance of their duties, they are deemed to know what is inherently right and inherently wrong and are bound to discharge such duties with prudence, caution and attention which careful men usually exercise in the management of their affairs.

As agents of the law, sheriffs are called upon to discharge their functions with due care and utmost diligence because, in serving the court’s processes and implementing its order, they cannot afford to err without affecting the integrity of their office and the efficient administration of justice.”

Demolitions must be done in the most humane way possible, in the presence of a representative of a city government as required by law. That the city mayor was there to cushion the violent demolition is a good thing. Too bad, a sheriff could not wait for a couple of hours for the mayor who wanted to be there with her constituents whose homes were to be demolished.