“I am happy to see substantial improvements,” Drilon told a meeting of the Iloilo River Development Council at the Hotel del Rio last Friday. “Things are moving now, and we will pick up our pace,” he added.

Senator Franklin Drilon confers with City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog before meeting with Iloilo River Development Council.

But Drilon was aghast upon learning that 56 business establishments in the city discharge their sewage into the Iloilo River. He demanded from environmental officials a definite plan of action to compel these business establishments to put up waste water treatment facilities. If they can’t do that, then these firms should be required to build their own septic tanks for their waste water discharges. He wasn’t at all pleased to know that the entire stretch of the river is high on choliform, making swimming hazardous to human health.

City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog directed his staff to get him the names of these 56 violators. “I will put their business permits on hold pending compliance with this requirement,” Mabilog said.

Drilon was particularly pleased that the major illegal structures that stood out like sore thumbs on the Iloilo River have been removed. For him, this is a big victory in the sense that it shows the resolve of the city government to enforce the laws. It is a signal to everybody that the city means business. He hopes the momentum will pick up, especially after he announced that a P750,000-fund for livelihood assistance to marginal fisherfolk engaged in fishpen operations is now ready to be transferred to the city government’s Land Bank acccount.

With this money, the city government will proceed to demolish the “punots”, as the fishpens are known in the dialect, found upstream of the Carpenter Bridge linking Molo and Mandurriao districts. The fishpens do not only present an ugly sight on the river; they are also a big contributor to the heavy siltation in the waterway. Once these fishpens are gone, the ebb and flow of the river will be unimpeded, and this will allow the tides to do its natural function of “rinsing” the water of its pollutants.

Now that the council is gaining momentum, Drilon is making sure its operations do not falter as it tackles bigger challenges, and projects. He is allocating P500,000 for its day-to-day budgetary requirements. For him, the next few months will be crucial: in July this year, the P150-million Esplanade designed by internationally-renowned landscape architect Paolo Alcazaren will be put up for bidding, with development work to commence afterwards. If things go according to schedule, Drilon hopes to have the Esplanade inaugurated by President Noynoy Aquino in January 2012 when Iloilo celebrates the Dinagyang Festival.

The Esplanade is envisioned to become the city’s main recreation and tourism area. It will be an open-air park with excellent landscaping and facilities for parks and recreation. A host of entertainment and tourism-related activites are being drawn up to attract the public to converge on this park day and night. There will be concerts, arts performances and other crowd-drawing activities. The public will also get to appreciate nature better, as the Iloilo River is home to rare species of mangrove plants.

Meanwhile, Drilon continues to use his clout to get more resources for the project. By August, a second dredger is expected to be deployed in Iloilo City help suction up the heavy sedimentation from the river bottom.

The "Visayas Dredge II" is standing by on the Iloilo River to start drawing out the heavy sedimentation.

The “Visayas Dredge II” is awaiting the go-signal to commence operations after local environmental officials decide on the disposal area for the dredged material. According to Drilon, the dredgers will not be pulled out of Iloilo City for as long as these are needed for the project. The second unit is smaller, but more maneuverable, and will be used to snake its way up small creeks and remove the sedimentation.

The PPA, on the other hand, is enforcing strict rules to keep the river wharf clean and uncluttered. Port Manager Louie Cuison admitted that he is threatened with lawsuits over a new policy banning the unloading of charcoal on the river wharf. “The issue here is pollution,” he said. Several derelicts have already been salvaged and stripped bare to remove them from the river wharf; some have been there for as long as 10 years. Its own dredging operations are also on-going.

The "bare bones" of this fishing vessel are all that remained two weeks ago after salvaging operations began to break it apart and remove the eye-sore from the river wharf.

Phase I has been completed to keep the draft for the river wharf at a minimum of 5 meters to allow unhindered navigation and docking for commercial vessels, Cuison said.

Drilon joined local officials and key executives of Megaworld Inc. yesterday (May 6) for the ground-breaking and capsule-laying for the Richmonde Hotel just a hundred meters from the old airport’s terminal building to formally start a 10-year development plan that is anchored on the company’s “live, work and play” philosophy for its long list of successful “self-contained” communities that began with East Wood in the national capital 12 years ago.

“If plans don’t miscarry, Megaworld will invest a total of P20 billion in the Iloilo Business Park project in the next 10 years to make it the next center of business, entertainment and tourism for Iloilo,” Drilon said.  The Richmonde Hotel and Twin BPO Towers will cost P2.5 billion, which Drilon said demonstrates the company’s firm commitment to make Iloilo its base of operations in the Visayas.

“Ayala Land can have Cebu (with its Ayala Business Park) while Megaworld will have Iloilo,” Drilon said.

Senator Franklin Drilon, along with Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog and Megaworld first vice president Kevin Tan, get a good look at the proposed Richmonde Hotel and BPO Towers development just before the ground-breaking and lowering of the time capsule last Friday, May 6.

Once completed, the Iloilo Business Park will generate a total of 35,000 to 40,000 jobs, particularly in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, according to Jericho Go, Megaworld first vice president for business development and leasing. It will feature two grand hotels, call centers and a 2-kilometer retail strip that will make it a “self-contained community”, Go said.

“We will implement a model that proved to be successful in a long line of projects starting with the Eastwood IT Hub in Quezon City 12 years ago,” Go said. Megaworld doesn’t just build; it seeks to achieve a critical mass of economic activities and build a strong consumer base to support its tenants, he added. “We want to stimulate the local economy, and this means we want to build a strong neighborhood to benefit the entire city and province,” he said.

Drilon expressed his admiration for Megaworld for sinking P1.2 billion to buy the old Mandurriao airport property four years ago even though the situation wasn’t yet ripe for a massive property development. “Back then, Andrew Tan already saw the potential of Iloilo for first-class developments,” Drilon said. The only hitch at the time was the unstable power supply problem. “That is now a thing of the past,” he added.

With a 164-mW coal-fired power plant now in full operations, Drilon said Iloilo has solved its problem on the unreliable supply and high cost of power. “We have removed the biggest obstacle to investments,” he said. In anticipation of increased power requirements for Panay island, A. Brown and Co. is also building a 200-mW coal-fired plant in Concepcion, a project which should remove any concerns about power for a long time, Drilon said.

The start of the Richmonde Hotel and BPO Tower construction was the result of Drilon’s prodding, though. “I talked with Megaworld executives to press them on when the company intended to begin work on the old Mandurriao airport property,” Drilon confessed.

His nagging, if it can be called such, produced positive results. A few days after his meeting with Megaworld, no less than Andrew Tan flew to Iloilo, unannounced, to take a look at the property. “He liked what he saw and decided right there and then that it’s a go,” Drilon said.

Confidence in Iloilo has always been high, Go said. “As early as two years ago, we received an offer from two BPO companies to sign contracts with us, site unseen,” he said. “The reputation of Iloilo as a university city is known far and wide,” he added. This is the reason Megaworld quickly ended the hibernation status of its old airport property and got to work on phase I after learning that the power situation has vastly improved.

Go is also optimistic that BPO will continue to be the biggest employer in the country for the years to come. “The market is growing, and we have a competitive advantage in terms of trainable manpower,” he told a joint meeting of the Rotary Clubs and the Iloilo Business Club. The country has edged out India as the leading BPO services provider in the world, and it is riding on an upward trend. “We haven’t even gotten 10% of the world market for BPO,” Go added.

BusinessWeek Magazine has also identified Iloilo as one of the best locations for the BPO business, which is why Megaworld has manifested greater confidence that its Iloilo Business Park project will succeed.

But what is puzzling is the arrogance and defiance of Yee in not completing the demolition of the buildings as he had promised. Towards the deadline, he even put up a fence made of cyclone wire and GI sheets around the premises. It was as if he intended to make a last stand even though 75% of the buildings were already torn down. Was Yee planning to test the will of Mabilog? Did he think the city government would still give him yet another stay on the forcible eviction? His actions are hard to understand because as a city councilor, he had sworn to uphold the laws of the land.

What happened to Barbeque Park leaves a bile taste in the mouth. It betrays a dark side in Yee’s character. Instead of cooperation to give the city’s rehabilitation and improvement efforts for the Iloilo River, Yee chose to resist the demoliton order despite the glaring truth about his illegal occupancy of the property. This experience should teach us a lesson not to be swayed by catchy nicknames like “Mr. Clean”. Yee demonstrated that the muck from the Iloilo River may have stuck to his mind, and made him the number one law breaker in the city.

Elsewhere in the city, the P1-billion Ayala Land Technohub is finished, and just waiting to be inaugurated. I heard there’s already an Indian BPO firm that’s setting up shop in the facility. The list of tenants is also fast growing, a favorable sign that real estate projects like this will sell like hotcake. It will help encourage more investors to put their money into new buildings and malls.

Edgar “Injap” Sia II, former owner of Mang Inasal, is shifting his business interests to real estate. Two or three condominiums are being built simultaneously in Mandurriao. Condominiums are still scarce in Iloilo, and the idea of building them in a place where there’s still wide open land might yet be seen as risky. But credit it to Injap, he knows how to calculate the risks and reap the rewards. Who would have thought he could make billions from “inasal nga manok”?

This property boom should not be permitted to lose steam. The city government will have to work overtime making sure the required support infrastructure is put in place. The most important of this is a better road system. There are so many roads in the city which are such in a deteriorated condition that motorists compare them to the lunar surface. Good roads will ensure that goods and services flow smoothly and quickly.

An issue of big concern is water. There seems no end to the legal tug-of-war at the Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD). Just last night, I was told the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) has appointed another set of interim directors, all coming from the agency. This might just deepen the crisis. Meanwhile, the water supply problem in the city is far from being effectively addressed. It’s time the conflicting parties come to terms and set aside personal agendas to work for the community’s interests.

Iloilo is now poised to make that crucial breakthrough and claim a place as one of the country’s top economic centers. Let me repeat: this can happen without our leaders rushing to plug the gaps in our infrastructure needs. It is not a good time to be quarreling over petty issues. The bigger issue is the economic growth of the city.

Iloilo signals its bid to become a major center for BPO operations with the completion of the Ayala Techno Hub, a three-story facility devoted almost entirely for call center operations, at the Iloilo Board Walk complex of the Pison family. The ground floor of the building will accept business tenants, particularly those engaged in the food and retail businesses.

When Mr. Yee saw the human barricade was no match to the wrecking crew, he made an impassioned appeal to let him do the job before the end of April 2011. He didn’t want the improvements in his restaurant business damaged beyond repair, he said. He was a defeated man, and he asked for compassion. Well, city officials led by City Legal Officer Jose Junio Jacela softened up and granted his request. It was a decision that put the administration of Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog in deeper trouble with the media. The local chief executive was bombarded with even more criticism; his “political will” was questioned.

Despite this leniency shown by Mayor Mabilog, Yee has demonstrated a lack of remorse for the illegal occupation of the government property beside the Iloilo River. Worse, he displayed yet another round of arrogance when he stood up before the Sangguniang Panlungsod last Wednesday and attacked what he described as a political leader’s “vested interest” in the Iloilo River. A colleague in the city council later remarked that Yee could only be talking about Senator Franklin M. Drilon as the target of his attack.

Yee tried to portray himself as a victim of Drilon’s “vested interest”. But nobody can think of what “vested interest” Drilon holds for for the Iloilo River other than his desire to rehabilitate and beauty this 15-kilometer long waterway for business, tourism and environmental preservation purposes. As a result, Yee’s privilege speech boomeranged on him. Instead of gaining public sympathy, he succeeded in drawing more scorn and ridicule in the media. It is clear to everybody that it was Yee who had abused his position for personal profit. Drilon, on the other hand, has only the public good in mind, nothing more, nothing less.

In a 14-page Order handed down by RTC Branch 22 presiding judge Guilljie Delfin-Lim late Monday afternoon, the Court said the land occupied by Yee’s restaurant business “forms part of the public domain”. That is because the Iloilo River is deemed “an arm of the sea”, and added lands to the shores cannot be acquired by riparian rights or acquisitive prescription, the Court held.

City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog expressed jubilation over the Court’s ruling which he said would now pave the way for him to demonstrate his political will and carry out the law without fear of being stymied by TROs.

In an interview over Bombo Radyo Iloilo on Tuesday morning (March 29) from Singapore where is currently on official travel, Mabilog said he sees no more obstacle to the implementation of an order to tear down illegal structures along the Iloilo River by April 1.

Mabilog credited the city legal office headed by Atty. Jose Junio Jacela for ably defending the position of the city government. “This also demonstrates that the insinuations about our deliberately weakening the case for the city is unfounded,” he added.

Bombo Radyo anchorman Don Dolido said he tried to contact Yee but the official and restaurant owner declined to answer the station’s telephone calls.

The Court held that it had no authority to stop the government, both local and national, from implementing the demolition of illegal structures. It cited section 1 of Presidential Decree No. 1818 which prohibits judicial courts from issuing TROs or injunctions against government infrastructure projects.

The evidence submitted made it clear that the land upon which Barbeque Park stands is public land, the Court said. In addition, Yee failed to show his “clear and legal right over the subject foreshore land” on which stands his restaurant business, it said.

The Court noted that Yee was able to obtain a building permit from the city government on the basis of a Revocable Permit Application (RPA) he had filed with the DENR. Yee had also filed a Miscellaneous Lease Application (MLA) over a “parcel of foreshore land”, it added.

“When he applied (for) his MLA, RPA with DENR, of which he (Yee) paid rentals in the form of occupation fees for using that ‘parcel of foreshore land’ he recognized that it is a public land, owned by the state,” the Court pointed out.

Yee’s own actions show it is contradictory for him to claim the land as his own, on account of being a riparian owner and/or by acquisitive prescription  pursuant to Article 457 and Article 1117, respectively, of the New Civil Code.

The Court said the circumstances indicated that Yee knew all along that the land on which Barbeque Park stood is a public land.

“This is bolstered by the fact that he did not declare the property in his name; neither (did he) pay real property taxes thereof, at least as an indicia of possession in the concept of owner,” the Court, citing the Supreme Court in “Alcaraz vs. Tanga-an, 401 SCRA 84″, said.

The Court added that the only Tax Declaration he held for the property was in 2006, and the real property taxes Yee had paid in 2010 and 2011 were for his buildings.

DENR Community Environment and Natural Resources Officer (CENRO) Bernabe “Bing” Garnace said the multipartite monitoring team (MMT) will conduct a consultation dialogue on Tuesday, March 29, to validate the contents of the complaint, and verify the identity of the complainants. He said his agency had found no traces of the alleged pollution when a team went to the barangay and look into the complaints.

PEDC spokesman Lemuel T. Fernandez described the purported complaint as “highly suspicious” because several signatures appearing on the document appear to have been made by only one hand, and many other signatures belonged to former workers of the Global Business Power Corp. (GBPC) whose work contracts have ended, and may just be trying to pressure the company to give them employment.

Barangay Ingore punong barangay Pedro Jalandoni also criticized the movers behind the complaint, saying they disregarded the barangay’s role in taking up issues regarding the coal-fired power plant. Jalandoni said many residents in his barangay have told him they were surprised to find signatures purporting to be theirs, when in fact, they have not signed the document.

President Aquino is scheduled to inaugurate the power plant, which consists of two 82-mW generating units, on Friday, April 1, 2011, according to Fernandez.

Yee, assisted by two lawyers from the law firm of Albano & Reyna based in San Pedro, Laguna, asserted his claim over the foreshore area as he tried to prove having acquired ownership over “accreted” land on the riverbank by his uninterrupted occupation for more than 10 years.

However, the city government, represented by the City Legal Office led by Atty. Jose Junio Jacela, disputed Yee’s claim, saying the city councilor established “no clear and unmistakable right” over the property. Jacela said Yee failed to show proof that he acquired riparian rights over it while insisting that the area is an easement on an arm of the sea, thereby outside the commerce of man.

RTC Branch 22 presiding judge Guillie Delfin-Lim asked the contending parties to submit their position papers on Thursday to state their arguments and detail their documentary evidence. During the hearing, Judge Lim allowed counsels for the plaintiff and respondent city government ample time to orally state their arguments.

Judge Lim also asked Yee, who took the witness stand, whether he was amenable to a settlement with the city government in which he allows the removal of the “illegal structures” in exchange for compensation for the cost of the buildings.

During his testimony, Yee told the court the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) had paid him P1.3 million as reparation cost for the voluntary dismantling of several structures on the same lot to give way to the construction of the Trenas Boulevard.

Yee said he considered the payment “partial” as he hoped to be able to collect more for the cost of the structures he tore down. But he admitted that no amount was paid in consideration of the 50-square meter area that the DPWH had utilized for the boulevard’s construction.

In open court, Judge Lim suggested that Yee explore the possibility of a negotiated settlement over the cost of the structures using the DPWH arrangement as model. However, his lawyers strongly objected, saying Yee was exercising his ownership rights of the questioned property.

For his part, Jacela pointed out that the only building permit Yee had obtained from the city engineer’s office covered the buildings that were removed for the road project. That building permit was issued in 1991 yet.

Yee had erected other structures on the lot that had no building permits, Jacela said. Yee said he undertook “repairs”, not construction.

Jacela also pointed out that even Yee’s tax declaration over the restaurant indicated only “commercial buildings” as his property, and did not include the lot. He added that the private property from which Yee alleges sprang his riparian right over the foreshore area was registered to a corporation, GMX Corp.

Although Yee said he was the chairman and president of the corporation, he had failed to show that the riparian rights which he claimed over the foreshore area were transferred to him, Jacela pointed out.

Asked why he did not want to cooperate with the city government’s program to clear the Iloilo River of illegal structures, Yee told the court that he worried about the jobs of his restaurant employees in addition to the exercise of his ownership rights.

For lack of time, the court did away with the testimonies of officials from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to prove that the Iloilo River is actually “an arm of the sea” as ruled by the Supreme Court, Jacela said.

The hearing didn’t get on to the main issues right away.

Lawyers Norberto Posecion and Romeo Gerochi pressed their leave of court to allow them to appear as respondent-intervenors in the case, saying the city government appeared to have been “lukewarm” in its actions in the demolition of illegal structures on the Iloilo River.

This led Jacela to manifest the firm course of action being adopted by City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog and insisted that the City Legal Office was ready and capable to carry this legal battle competently.

Yee’s lawyers also objected to the participation of Posecion and Gerochi, saying they had no personality to implead themselves in the case, as it was merely one for injunction.

The court expects to hand down its ruling on the petition for injunction with a prayer for a temporary restraining order to prevent the city government from the planned demolition of all illegal structures squatting on government land along the Iloilo River.

A limping merchant vessel that is awaiting repair at the A1 Ship Repair and Drydock on the Iloilo River is towed by a tugboat to another location to decongest the waterway.