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Life in a squat of world's 3rd most densely-populated city
MANILA. May 2 : Lisa lives tn a one-room shanty the size of a single bed. There Is no running water and no toilet. Trucks thundering past her door belch out exhaust fumes that seep through the wooden walls, writes Reuter.
Her box-like home is on the pavement of a dusty road not far from the five-star Manila Hotel where a single room costs US dollar 175 a nighL
Lisa, a 36-year-old mother of Iwo, is one of the Philippine capital's 2.4 million squatters. The 4O*q km (15.5 sq mile) city ranks next to Cairo and Dhaka as the world s most densely-populated.
Every day the sound of blaring car horns fill* the shanty made from scraps of wood which Lisa shares with her husband. No amount of washing can cleanse the grim which has worked its way into every pore of her body.
Interviewed outside her home, she says she left her teenage children with her parents so she could live with her husband who earns just 50 pesos (two dollar) a day as a cargo hauler In the port area.
Lisa and her squatter neighbours, most of whom came to the city in search of work, buy
water to wash themselves for P 3.50 (14 cent) per container.
Each family pays P10’(40 cent) a week for illegally-tapped electricity and P1OO (US four dollar). A week to a policeman for protection against eviction.
While Manila's squatters may be destitute, they are not powerless.
Backed by the Catholic church and nongovernment organisations (NGOs) they have begun to organise themselves into a political force which candidates in national and local elections on May 11 cannot afford to Ignore.
According lo Antonio Lazaro of the government s urban Poor Commission, squatters are a rich source of vote* »ince 5.5 million are registered voter* out of a total voting population of 30 million.
During campaigns, the head of about 2,000 urban poor organisation* are suddenly acknowledged since they can Influence large blocks of voters.
"Candidates ring up our office to find out the heads of these organisations," Lazaro said.
Erning Pasion, 49, a driver, has been the uncontented president in his district in Manila
suburb. He earned the respect of his fellow squatters when he stood his ground and fought for their home* when authorities tried to demolish them.
Pasion boasts he can Influence some 20.000 to vote for the candidate he deems most sympathetic. He said a presidential candidate is meeting him and other squatter leaders to listen lo their needs with the promise of aid if he 1s elected.
"Because of their wretched living condition they are very gullible to promises," Lazaro said.
"Candidates come to them with promises of a better life, then forget them after the elections," he said. They become the most raped sector of society."
Presidential candidate Imelda Marcos, widow of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos, is promising the squatters housing and jobs. She has actively courted the poor in a country where half the population lives below the official Poverty Line.
The squatters have been hit by the demolition of shanties, and price* which *hot up by around 20 per cent last year.
These are times of real crisis." said Lisa.
"Life was better under Marcos than under Cory (President Corazon Aquino). Under Marcos, land was left alone. Now there are a lot of demolition,' she said.
Then, price* were high but affordable. Now prices are high are high and unaffordable. In these time*, you really feel like rebilllng." she scowled.
Squatter communities have been shunted from place to place for the past six years to make way for the construction of shopping malls and flyovers.
But for the most part, the squatters are still undecided who they will vote for when the country elects more than 17,000 official* from the President down to local councillors.
"I don't care," said a young man fazing in the heat with hl* friend*
"Nothing happen* anyway." said a 3O year old father who has Hved in a smoky, rubbish strewn reclamation arc for 10 years.
"It's all the same. We go there, we vote, then we leave. That'* It," he said with a resigned shrug.
"Whoever come* out (the winner)." says Lisa "we will still go hungry."