‘Batang hamog’

In the quaint language of the press, they would have been known as “rugby boys,” “kanto boys,” “batang kalye,” or “batang squatter,” but the earthier vernacular simply refers to them as “batang hamog.” The country was thrilled to see the rallies in Rizal Park, the Edsa Shrine, and the People Power Monument; it was less thrilled to see a hotel in flames and rocks being thrown at truncheon-wielding police. Despite fears that the public mood was so ugly that it was waiting to combust into violence, there was far less of it than people feared, but there was enough to give pause and provoke recriminations.

One clip showed a masked individual smashing a pedestrian traffic light in Legarda near Mendiola with a skateboard. A colleague familiar with the area told me that there is a local community of skaters who skate almost every day in front of Starbucks and McDonald’s near Centro Escolar University, right by the gate of the Palace.

But other videos in nearby areas also showed pedestrian and traffic lights being smashed, not this time by those dressed in the quasi-uniforms of skaters, but instead by the youths of the slums. Particularly intense violence was directed at CCTV cameras at the corner of Recto and Nicanor Reyes, opposite the University of the East. In all these cases, it was also remarkable that there were those from organized groups who seemed, if not morbidly entertained, then outright enthusiastic about the vandalism (vandalism of another kind, sloganeering graffiti, which is part of the generations-old contribution of militants to public spaces).

The locals—the batang hamog—on the other hand, had their own grievances, as one veteran photographer observed. They were, according to him, mostly angry at the Manila cops over the daily abuse the kids were subjected to. Some, the photographer saw, had been nursing their grievances since the days of Tokhang: “t___-i__ pinatay nyo si ____!”

The gunshots reported online turned out to be instruments of fraternity and other fights, “pillboxes,” while the bangs people heard were tear gas being fired.

There was mob violence. A Sogo hotel was looted outright: a mob raided the hotel safe, took the day’s earnings, and robbed the staff and whoever else was in the lobby—others alleged guests in their rooms were relieved of their cell phones and cash.

Manila Mayor Isko Moreno said the trouble was caused by agents provocateurs in the pay of a Filipino Chinese businessman, without, however, actually naming anyone. If the urban poor have more than sufficient bad blood and grievances to provoke rock-throwing and skirmishing with the police, there remains the sight of Molotov cocktails and other telltale signs of planned violence that suggest there were some efforts to introduce violence.

More to the point, and unsurprising to those familiar with local governments, was the same mayor pointing at street urchins and saying, “If they’re still around at 10 p.m., kunin niyo lahat.” You may not be able to prevent the burning of tires or the tipping over of vehicles, save a news crew from assault or a hotel from being robbed, but by God, you decree the dispersal of kids by the cops.

I saw one bishop’s appeal to the very same young not to let their anger consume them—with the added comment by the one sharing the quote that it’s the wrongdoers who should be consumed instead. Which is what former Ilocos Sur governor Luis “Chavit” Singson discovered when he tried to attend one of the rallies and got booed instead.

The life of Singson is the story of how local and national politics explosively collide. That former Quezon City representative Vincent “Bingbong” Crisologo had to establish his political base in Quezon City is directly related to the war of extermination between his clan and that of Singson before martial law, and the fall of former president Joseph Estrada was triggered by the confrontation—the battle of the racketeers—between Singson and Atong Ang.

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Singson might have gotten a few decades’ head start, but in the gray zone, where the legal and illegal meet (and often allegedly combine), it’s Ang who has proven to be the man to beat. What Indonesians might have termed the “konfrontasi” between the two, a generation ago in the era of Estrada, has proven to be merely round one in a struggle that has arguably continued to the present.

This is where the public’s attention span–and that of the political class, forced, whether it likes it or not, to respond to the headlines—harms our collective ability to see any issue through to its conclusion.

When the scandal over crooked contractors broke out, there were some murmurs on social media that this would mean the fading away of the scandal over liquidated sabungeros. Proof positive of this was when Singson held a press conference before the weekend to join the fray: he was duty-bound, he said, to expose the ties of the President to the same type of crooked contracting that has already sunk the No. 3 and No. 4 men in the government, the ex-Senate president and ex-speaker.

The youth, Singson piously advised, should walk out of their classes and rally to show their indignation over presidential corruption. They did, and then they booed him.