The residents of Metro Manila's infamous garbage dump are hopeful about elections and the future.

by Romel M. Lalata

	It's too early to tell if dumpsite communities like Payatas will deliver as much votes to FPJ as they did to Erap back in 1998. For one, FPJ is not Erap, as some fans of the ousted president have been saying. For another, Payatas today is hardly the dump it once was. [photo by Sonny Yabao]

IF THERE ever were such a thing as the best time to go campaigning at the vote-rich Payatas dumpsite, this summer would be it, when the sun is fierce enough to burn away the usual miasma hovering over the colossal mound of compacted garbage, and when dry winds sweep in constantly to dispel whatever noxious gases the heap belches out. On days like these, candidates can campaign freely with no accompanying stink.

Still, it's a riveting sight even for those who think that they've seen everything, and a national candidate or two just might falter somewhere in the middle of a speech because of the scene lying right before him (or her). After all, the Payatas dumpsite really is the granddaddy of them all, towering over trees and houses and spread over some 22 hectares, a behemoth that could easily swallow any of the country' s biggest malls and still have room enough for seconds. It's a huge, slumbering beast, patiently feeding on as much as a third of Metro Manila's 6,000 tons of garbage everyday, its skin of brown earth and shredded plastic on a perpetual molt.

"It didn't use to be so big," says 50-year-old Lisa Cauding of the dumpsite, which is just a few steps away from her home. Her family has lived in the Lupang Pangako, one of the small communities within sprawling Payatas, for 14 years now, and she says that "way back then, it was much farther away and much, much smaller. We couldn't even see it. "

"Just a few years ago, you could still even glimpse jeeps traversing the road from where we stand," says her husband Jake as he fills up containers with water from a hose snaking from a neighbor's faucet.

The dump was just an unimpressive eyesore in the late 1980s, although even then it already had the potential to outstrip its more notorious ilk in Tondo, Manila-the late, great Smokey Mountain-because there was just so much space for it to expand into. Only a couple of bulldozers and few scavengers worked the mound then. Houses were few and far between, the roads wet and muddy even in high summer. Communities like Lupang Pangako or Land of Promise were just a few clumps of houses rising in the distance.

Now Payatas has about 80,000 residents, with more added to its population every day. And families like the Caudings have found themselves living under the garbage dump's shadow, literally.

It's no wonder action-film-star-turned-presidential-candidate Fernando Poe Jr. has great hopes for Payatas, at least in the sense that he expects to get a lot of support from this Quezon City barangay of 44,000 registered voters. It is masa, it is poor, it is the kind of community that candidates like to say they will lift up and save from the jaws of destitution and desperation. Already, Poe's recruitment headquarters is the most conspicuous-if not the only one-of its kind there. In February, FPJ also said he would agree to debate with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo only if it were held in Payatas, where people (his supporters obviously) could step in and ask questions.

FPJ's bosom buddy, former movie actor and deposed President Joseph 'Erap' Estrada, is still popular with the people there, even after three years in detention and numerous exposes on the extent of his corruption. Strategic infusions of government funding by his administration and simple gestures by Erap himself had seen to that. Andrew, one of the teenagers loitering near the passenger jeep terminal, says a bit wistfully, "Erap used to come here often, and not just during elections."

But it's too early to tell if dumpsite communities like Payatas will deliver as much votes to FPJ as they did to Erap back in 1998. For one, FPJ is not Erap, as some fans of the ousted president have been saying. For another, Payatas today is hardly the dump it once was.

ON THE morning of July 10, 2000, after 15 days of rain, a chunk of the Payatas dumpsite slid off and buried more than 200 mostly sleeping residents of Lupang Pangako under tons of muck. Dozens of bodies remain unrecovered to this day. The tragedy sent the nation reeling in shock, devastated the career of then Quezon City Mayor Ismael Mathay Jr., and left the metropolis stinking to high heavens as the dumpsite was temporarily shut down. It was reopened in November of the same year only after the Metro Manila Development Authority failed to find an alternative place for the capital's trash.

Horrible though it was, some good did come out of the July 2000 tragedy. An outpouring of sympathy from the guilt-ridden public and private sectors eventually saw social services and utilities making their way into many corners of the communities around the dump. Electricity became available to almost every household three years ago. The Caudings now have access to potable, running water as of last year and it's not at all an issue that it comes from their neighbor's tap. And even though the pipes cough up water only every other day and only from two a.m. to 10 a.m. at that, they're not ones to complain. In fact, they're even glad.

"We used to buy water up there at P5 per container," says Jake, referring to the main road some 100 meters away. "Now we pay only P2 to our neighbor for every jug we fill up."

This has had a profound impact on people who have never had it as easy before, and the resulting shift in attitude toward government is rather palpable. Oh, residents still have their laments when talk swings over to the way the country is being run, but these are spoken of matter of factly now rather than with rancor, or worse, helplessness. To think that in May 2001, Payatas sent an angry contingent of Estrada supporters to join the tens of thousands of the city's poor who charged to Malacañang and threatened the then four-month-old Arroyo administration.

Visibly shaken, President Arroyo, in her first state-of-the-nation address a couple of months later, took three children from Payatas and made aggressive promises to uplift their lives, offering them as a showcase for the country's poor. Subsequent news reports say that the children have continued to receive financial assistance and this in turn has silenced some of the Arroyo government's critics in Payatas. In 2003, the president herself promised that she would negotiate with private landowners to buy out the dumpsite property and parcel it out among the families affected by the July 2000 disaster. The offer was received with mixed emotions, with some families saying perhaps money would be better.

Nothing has come out of that promise so far. But something has been taking place in Payatas nevertheless. Even at a glance, Lupang Pangako, the community closest to the dump, is today suspiciously unlike the picture of material and spiritual deprivation it has long been painted to be. The roads are wide and paved and while alleyways are not, these are at least swept clean by residents themselves at the crack of dawn. Lot sizes aren't bad; some are even outright enviable. Many of the houses may be a bit rundown and made up of a hodgepodge of materials, but they're lovingly kept neat and clean — even the homes nearest the dump. One can also tell that people began tending gardens and planting trees almost as soon as they moved in- there are a few mangoes just putting out their first fruits for the summer and coconut trees rise straight and tall. There is order here and a good-natured ambience difficult to find in any part of Metro Manila, bar none. Even the scavengers have IDs and register themselves with the dumpsite authorities.

Economic activity has picked up. Near the jeep terminal is a small wet market, a grocery, and a store selling mineral water. There's a newspaper stand that carries the major broadsheets. Even scavenging, though still backbreaking work, brings in more money now.

"They're buying everything these days," explains 19-year-old Andrew of the ubiquitous junkshops dotting the dumps boundaries. "Someone as young as I am can easily earn P300 scavenging the whole day and even as much as P400."

That shouldn't really come as a surprise. Despite the doom and gloom dished out by the country's newspapers, the economy isn't performing all that badly. Sure, there's the continuing poor performance of the peso against the dollar and a dip in government spending due to fiscal difficulties. But gross domestic product (GDP) was up by 4.5 percent in 2003. Gross national product or GNP, plus income from abroad, hit 5.5 percent growth, higher than the upper end of government's band target of 4.5 to 5.4 percent.

Plus, this is a community that never gave up in working to better itself. And in doing so, it seems to have fallen into better times.