ACT Teachers Representative and Deputy Minority Leader Antonio Tinio slammed the Marcos Jr. administration and local government units for clearing urban poor communities, street vendors, and microenterprises along ASEAN Summit routes, calling it a shameful revival of the dictatorship-era playbook of concealing poverty behind façades of art and beautification.
“Five decades after Imelda Marcos whitewashed Manila’s slums for the Miss Universe pageant, the IMF-World Bank meeting, and the papal visit, her son is staging the exact same production. From the ‘City of Man’ to today’s art-wrapped barriers along J.W. Diokno Boulevard, the script has not changed: hide the poor, polish the pavement, and deceive the world,” Tinio said.
The solon pointed to the displacement of vendors near Baclaran Church and beneath LRT Line 1 in Pasay, the closure of small businesses like Diwata Pares whose dozen workers earn only P500 a day, and reports that street dwellers around the Manila Film Center were driven away — all in the name of presenting a “sanitized” Metro Manila to more than 10,000 foreign delegates.
“It is the height of irony that the works of Filipino artists — including our National Artists — are being weaponized to hide hunger and homelessness from visiting dignitaries. Art is meant to expose the truth of the human condition, not to serve as wallpaper over the misery of the urban poor. This is an insult to the legacy of national artists for this misuse of their craft,” Tinio stressed.
“Workers losing their daily livelihood while government spends millions on beautification is not ‘pakitang-gilas’ — it is state deception. No financial assistance has been given, no timeline for their return has been provided. These families are sacrificed so that foreign leaders will not see the poverty that this administration refuses to solve,” he added.
Tinio noted that the same stretch of road was littered with garbage when President Marcos Jr. personally inspected it in August, proving that the problem is not aesthetics but the government’s chronic neglect of housing, decent jobs, and services for the urban poor.
“Poverty is not an eyesore to be fenced off from view. It is the direct result of decades of anti-people policies — from the Marcos dictatorship’s plunder to today’s failure to deliver on affordable housing and livable wages. Hoisting tarpaulins and displaying artwork will not feed a single displaced vendor’s family,” Tinio said.
“Instead of cosmetic makeovers for the ASEAN Summit, we challenge the Marcos administration to institute genuine urban renewal: on-site, in-city housing for informal settlers, security of livelihood for vendors and microentrepreneurs, and basic services for communities that have long been abandoned by the state,” he ended.
Tinio called on the ASEAN National Organizing Council and the local governments of Pasay and Parañaque to immediately compensate affected vendors and workers and guarantee their unconditional return to their sources of livelihood after the Summit.
“If the Marcoses truly want to impress the world, they should not hide the poor — they should lift them up. But after five decades, from Imelda to Bongbong, wala pa ring nagbago: the poor remain hidden, and the powerful remain committed only to appearances.” Tinio concluded.#
