As I stepped out of the house yesterday afternoon to send my daughter to summer class, I was so shocked to find a long stretch of pink line on my way. Around Quezon City, I haven’t seen much pink around. Oh, yeah, there are those monstrous overpasses in the Cubao-EDSA area. That pink only the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) loves and paints around town ― starting off with Marikina City when then MMDA chairperson Bayani Fernando was still the town’s CEO. At the helm of MMDA now for some time and with quite a few months left before he relinquishes it to a new one, he has painted some sidewalks with that same pink that is starting to become an eyesore already rather than pretty.

*****Pinkrevolution

I just don’t know how much police power the agency can exercise for seemingly it can just violate beautiful architectural façades. And for what? Traffic discipline? Instilling traffic discipline in the
metropolis, where traffic is truly something you have to consider in your business plans or any plans these days, is a far-fetched issue for a government agency to smear anything on anybody’s frontage. Someone’s property rights (or even intellectual property rights) were violated when frontages can just be used for government graffiti.

MMDA should make better plans than this. Not everyone likes overpasses coated in pink or pink road fences to keep public utility vehicles in their lanes; but that was made possible because they were done on the streets ― government property. The yellow lanes are enough; if traffic is still a headache, ticket the violators, give the bus companies or jeepney organizations some ultimatum so they can place their erring drivers under disciplinary action. Discipline on the streets does not start with pink painted everywhere; it starts with the person by proper instruction. For all we know, this country can be so literally pink but road discipline will not have been achieved.

Traffic laws are enough to keep private, public utility drivers, and transport operators in check. What of the color-coding scheme? The implementation of such laws is oftentimes duplicated around the metro that violators feel so lost re-claiming their licenses or processing their tickets; why on earth does MMDA have to paint off the streets and into one’s property?

This ‘pink revolution’ ― if that is what is called by its planners and its executor ― is not pretty. That act is scary. It is a precedent to what else MMDA can do.