Annabelle Vitti C.

Valenzuela
Asia Research Centre

The Evolution of the

Kaantabay sa Kauswagan Program
of Naga City, Philippines:
The Influence of Policy and Politics
(Pre-1989 to 2010)

Working Paper No.173

October 2012

The views presented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Asia Research Centre or
Murdoch University. Working papers are considered draft publications for critical comments by colleagues and will generally
be expected to be published elsewhere in a more polished form after a period of critical engagement and revision. Comments
on this paper should be directed to the author at a.valenzuela@murdoch.edu.au

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National Library of Australia.

ISSN: 1037-4612
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

GLOSSARY ........................................................................................................................................... ii
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 1
PRE-1989: KAANTABAY AS PRODUCT OF DEMOCRATIZATION ........................................ 3
Political Economy before the 1990s ................................................................................................... 3
The Urban Situation ........................................................................................................................ 3
The Fiscal Situation and Local Economy ....................................................................................... 6
The Political Configuration ................................................................................................................ 7
Naga City’s Urban Poor Movement................................................................................................ 7
Naga City’s Elite ........................................................................................................................... 11
Initial Form of Kaantabay ................................................................................................................ 14
1989-1994: BREAKAWAY FROM A NATIONAL HOUSING PROGRAM ............................... 15
Community Mortgage Program and Site Upgrading........................................................................ 15
Initial Participation and Experience of the Naga City Government.............................................. 15
Disenchantment with CMP and an Accidental Scheme ................................................................ 16
Financial Recovery ........................................................................................................................... 18
Enabling National Policies ............................................................................................................... 19
Changing Local Politics ................................................................................................................... 20
The Urban Poor Movement and Local State Reformers ............................................................... 20
The Makings of Mayor Robredo’s Political Machine................................................................... 22
1994 onwards: Kaantabay as ‘Organically Enabling’ and Politicized Local Housing Program 24
Kaantabay as Organically-Enabling ................................................................................................ 25
Policy Framework ......................................................................................................................... 25
Institutional Elements ................................................................................................................... 26
Program Strategies ........................................................................................................................ 27
Political Relationships .................................................................................................................. 32
Politicization of Kaantabay .............................................................................................................. 36
The Workings of Mayor Robredo’s Political Machine ................................................................. 37
Kaantabay and Mayor Robredo’s Political Machine .................................................................... 40
REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................................... 58

i
 GLOSSARY

Barangay Smallest administrative unit in the Philippines, which in

territory is equivalent to a suburb in Australia. Each barangay
has a barangay council headed by a Barangay Captain and
consisting of a group of councilors called kagawad.
Bayadnihan A work-for-pay scheme where a participating urban poor
household could nominate any member to provide unskilled
and temporary labor service to the City Government in
exchange for a daily wage that is reverted as payment to its
amortization under Kaantabay. Before 2009, 100% of the
daily wage is used to pay amortization. In 2009 onwards, the
scheme changed as 50% of the daily wage is paid for
amortization while the other 50% becomes take home pay.
Centro The downtown area of Naga City
Closed sites Essentially onsite locations, with a pre-defined land area and
number of occupants prior to inclusion in Kaantabay, where
site upgrading is a major government intervention.
Community
Initiated Purchase (CIP) Form of land acquisition where the urban poor organization
puts up more than 50% of the land acquisition cost. The
balance is paid by the City Government and becomes a loan
amortized by household beneficiaries (Prilles 2004). In this
study, the Jolly Neighbors Association is under this scheme.
Community
Mortgage Program (CMP) Land acquisition is financed by the National Home Mortgage
Finance Corporation, with the urban poor organization
providing equity which covers a small portion of the land
acquisition cost. The portion paid for by the GFI is paid up in
return by the organization through monthly amortization
payments. Payment collection and monitoring is undertaken
by the urban poor organization. (Prilles 2004) An example in
this study is the Lerma Urban Poor Association
Condonation A measure implemented by the City Government to encourage
full payment of amortization by urban poor beneficiaries in a
given period of time. The amortizing beneficiary is made to
pay only the unpaid portion of the principal plus accumulated
interest, and not the penalties accrued for not paying. The
penalties could reach as much as 100% of the unpaid principal
and interest. Kaantabay has implemented 5 condonation
programs since 2000. The latest 2009 condonation sets out a
payment period of 2 years where: (i) from Jan 2010-Jan 2011,
households can avail 100% discount of penalties; and, (ii)
from Feb 2011-Feb 2012, discounts decline through time from
75%- to 25%
Counterpart (Land) Land provided by the City Government as counterpart to a
resettlement program usually spearheaded by other

ii
 government agencies. In Naga City, land was donated by the
City Government to the Core Shelter Program of the
Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)
which developed the Cararayan Phase 1-Core Shelter.
First (1st) stage titles Transfer certificate of titles still bearing the name of the Naga
City Government as owner of the land acquired for socialized
housing. These titles are awarded to the beneficiaries upon
full payment of their amortization and validation process
undertaken by UPAO.
Formalization The condition of conferring State-recognized formal systems
of land ownership, with associated rights and restrictions.
These formal systems differ according to whether land is
governed by customary right or religious customs, and
involving private or public lands (Payne 1997)
Fully paid Status of urban poor households who have paid 100% of their
amortization and outstanding arrears (interest, penalties and
taxes)
Illegal A condition of occupying a property without official or legal
permission (Payne 1997)
Informal A condition of settlement that exists outside of forms legally
recognized by the state but nonetheless acquires legitimacy by
social or customary recognition
Legalization ordinance Embodied in two ordinances (Nos. 2003-049 and 2004-102)
passed by the Naga City Government in 2003 and 2004 to
legalize the status of illegal settlers in sites acquired under
Kaantabay
Kaantabay sa Kauswagan A land tenure program targeting organized urban poor in Naga
City since 1989. Lands are acquired by the City Government
in behalf of urban poor organizations. The cost of land
acquisition is shared between the City Government and the
urban poor organization, the latter usually paying equity
equivalent to 10% of the acquisition cost. The members
amortize the balance at a certain period and interest rate
agreed upon with the City Government.
Kaantabay ordinance Ordinance No. 98-033 passed by the Naga City Government
in 1998 to manage and regulate the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan
program in accordance with national laws; in particular, the
1992 Urban Development and Housing Act
Land acquisition The City Government purchases from private landowners land
to be used for socialized housing. These lands could be
occupied or unoccupied.
Land swapping A form of land acquisition where the City Government offers
idle government land in exchange for private land. This tends
to be ideal for private lands already occupied by squatters. It
saves government the cost for removal and acquiring
relocation sites, avoids social and economic displacement, and
provides land of value to the private owner. (Prilles 2004)
UPVILLE-San Felipe represents this scheme.
Legalization ordinance The 2004 ordinance implemented by the Naga City
Government of legalizing the status of non-original awardees

iii
 who have bought and/ or occupied lands in a program-assisted
site through unauthorized means.

Never paid Status of urban poor households who have not paid a single
amount of the amortization and outstanding arrears
Non-original awardees Occupants in a program site who are not in the official list of
beneficiaries found eligible and qualified to be allotted lands
and duly recognized by the City Government and the urban
poor organization existing on site. These are distinguished
from original awardees by their illegal entry into the site.
Offsite development The development of resettlement sites for displaced urban
poor. These off-site locations could be found within the same
barangay (onsite relocation) where the urban poor came from,
or are in outside barangays. Development is not necessarily
complete and organized and could consist mainly of land
clearing and construction of access roads. Lots have been
subdivided and allocated prior to transfer by the urban poor.
Onsite development The development of already existing urban poor settlements
covered by the Kaantabay program. Other than the surveying
and finalization of lots, development covers upgrading works
mainly of access facilities (cementing and widening of roads
and pathways). In some cases, these include streetlights,
drainage, and the provision of public faucets and public toilets.
Open sites Off-site locations provided for relocatees or displaced people,
where memberships are ‘open’ to the number of households
that could be accommodated on the number of parcels laid out
on the land, and qualified according to the criteria of the Naga
City Urban Poor Affairs Office. The site would normally
consist of urban poor households coming from various
barangays in Naga City. The site usually sits on raw land
subject for redevelopment.
Originator Entities from the government or non-governmental sector
tasked with providing technical and legal assistance to urban
poor communities applying for the Community Mortgage
Program. Originators are said to be paid P500 per household-
borrower and are expected to assist further in monitoring the
performance of the community in paying their loans.
Partially paid Status of urban poor households that have paid lower than
100% of their amortization and outstanding arrears
Repayment ratio The proportion of fully paid to total household-beneficiaries in
a given site
Regularization A form of official recognition of urban informal settlements
by means of upgrading and/ or providing previously absent
basic urban services (e.g., access roads, streetlights, electricity,
water supply)
Rights As regards illegal occupation, refers to the rights to occupy a
certain piece of land. ‘Rights’ are often transacted between a
seller who has no title to the property and a buyer willing to
pay in order to occupy the land even without a title. Rights
tend to be valued according to the type and condition of

iv
 housing on the land, including improvements made or the
expenses defrayed by the seller for its upkeep. The selling of
rights could be done by an informal authority, such as
professional squatting syndicates, or be transacted individually
or through go-betweens known to the ‘rights’ seller.
Self-Help Community
Mortgage Form of land acquisition where the urban poor organization
puts less than 50% of the land acquisition cost. The balance is
paid by the City Government and becomes a loan amortized
by household beneficiaries. (Prilles 2004) All other
organizations covered in this study under ‘negotiated
purchase’ that are not under community-initiated purchase are
under this category
Squatter By standard definition, households/ individuals who occupy a
property without the permission of its owner, whether
government or private. In Naga City, squatters are those who
occupy government lands or lands with public infrastructure
like railways and bridges; in which, lot rents could not be
charged to its occupants.
Tenure security Degree of protection provided by the government to qualified
program beneficiaries against infringement, or unjust,
unreasonable, and arbitrary eviction or disposition, by virtue
of the right of ownership, lease agreement, usufruct and other
contractual arrangements
Title transfer Process undergone by fully-paid households to obtain land
titles in their own name. From the full payment of
amortization, the transfer is a 5-step process involving, among
others, validation and issuance of individualized titles by
UPAO, the payment of taxes and dues to the BIR and
Assessor’s Office, and application of name change to the
Register of Deeds.

v
INTRODUCTION
This paper explores the extent to which the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan program 1 continues to
embody what Naga City under Mayor Jesse M. Robredo is best known for in the Philippines
and all over the world: pro-poor tenure and good governance. With these attributes,
Kaantabay is widely portrayed as a paragon in terms of its own merits, and its leadership.
One, it is an internationally recognized, multi-awarded, and replicated exemplar of pro-poor
reform in socialized housing, achieved by a new breed of local government leaders
pioneering participatory and institutionalized good governance. 2 (United Nations Cyber
School Bus 1996; Sayos 1998; Ateneo Social Science Research Center (ASSRC) 2004;
Shatkin 2008; Anzorena 2008; Naga City Government 2004) Two, for his efforts in
Kaantabay and subsequent local governance initiatives it inspired, Mayor Robredo has
formally garnered acclaim as a good governance champion. Particularly, he was conferred the
Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service in 2000 (Robredo 2000; Ramon
Magsaysay Award Foundation 2000).
The policy significance of Kaantabay particularly dwells in it possessing policy
elements of the ‘enabling’ strategy advocated by international donors as early as the 1980s
(United Nations Centre for Human Settlements 1990; World Bank 1993). It is also
embedded within new national housing reforms passed in the Philippines in the early 1990s
under the Aquino administration. 3 In a way, other than exemplifying good governance, the

1
The program is henceforth referred to here as Kaantabay. This paper utilized official data from the Naga City
Government, secondary sources as well as interviews of households and key informants from 16 Kaantabay-
assisted sites gathered from two rounds of fieldwork (March-June 2010 and October 2010-March 2011).
2
No less than UN-Habitat cited Kaantabay as one of the world’s 40 best practices in urban regeneration and
renewal in 1996 (United Nations Cyber School Bus 1996), a program earlier awarded the ‘Galing Pook’
(‘exemplary locality’) citation by the Philippine Government in 1994 (Sayos 1998, 1), and already replicated in
neighbouring towns and provinces within the Bicol Region by 2008 (Anzorena 2008, 50).
3
In a departure from state housing for the poor in the 1960s to 1970s (Harris and Arku 2006), the ‘enabling’
strategy calls for a market- and decentralized strategy, with emphasis on the role of the local government in
place of the national government, working in partnership with people’s organizations, in taking on housing
reforms (United Nations Centre for Human Settlements 1990; Pugh 2000, 1995, 1994). The ‘enabling’ strategy
in housing is part of the ‘enablement’ approach which marked a paradigm shift in the delivery of development
aid in the 1990s, which from a macro level aimed to address poverty through increased economic growth (Pugh
1995, 1994). The approach, however, advocates a lead role for the private sector and non-government
organizations in sector development, in partnership national governments. As such, the ‘enablement’ approach
came to be identified with the promotion of private property rights, market deregulation, adjustment and
stabilization programs, finance capital market development as well as policy and institutional reforms for
expanded private sector and NGO participation. The theoretical foundations of ‘enablement’ particularly rest on
new institutional economics (NIE) which re-emphasized the developmental role of the state (national
government) in terms of institutional reforms (‘good governance’), and on new political economy (NPE) which
promoted state-market integration in sector development. For housing, the NPE-NIE marriage led to
articulation of ‘enablement’ in the promotion of ‘urban housing sector development’ (1986-1992), the third
phase in international housing policy development (1st phase: affordability/ cost recovery/ replicability strategies

1
purported success of Kaantabay by international donors (United Nations Cyber School Bus
1996; Naga City Government 2004) lies in is apparently attesting to the effectiveness of
market-led reforms.
This paper argues that, Kaantabay evolved from 1989 to the present, in ways that
conflict with trajectories of good governance and the ‘enabling’ strategy, primarily because
of reform dynamics influenced by policy and politics. The approach involves an alternative
examination of the specific context and interplay of policy and political influence over
Kaantabay’s 20-year existence in three periods: (1) Pre-1989: Kaantabay as a product of
democratization processes occurring in a period of weak elite opposition; (2) 1989-1994:
Kaantabay breaking out of the shadows of the Community Mortgage Program, a national
housing program; and, (3) 1994 onwards: Kaantabay as an ‘organically-enabling’ yet
politicised formal housing program administered by the Naga City Government. This paper
explores in each period, as much as possible, the corresponding environment affecting the
policy options for Kaantabay’s implementation and financing, the prevailing political
economy, as well as the unique confluence of political opportunities faced by Naga City’s
urban poor movement, its elites and local government reformers.
The political configurations, and consequent reform dynamics are initially examined
using the frameworks of interactive politics put forward by Fox (1993, 1994, 2007) and of
political opportunity from Tarrow (1998). Fox (1993, 1994, 2007) approaches the study of
reform as a product not only of political relationships involving strategic and transformational
interaction between state and societal actors but also of parallel and correlated changes in the
balance of power within the state and within societal forces. 4 Tarrow’s (1998) framework on
political opportunity as an opening for reform examines political influence in terms of five
‘dimensions of opportunity’: access, alignments, elite resistance, alliances, and facilitation.
These frameworks are applicable in the Naga City case where reform implementation
involves changing configurations not only in policy but more so in political opportunity

in the sites-and-services projects from 1970s to the early 1980s; and 2nd phase of housing finance development
(mid-1980s to the 1990s). This third phase is highlighted by integrated policy/ legislative, institutional, and
financial reforms (national and municipal-city levels usually in housing finance, land development and planning,
infrastructure development and environmental management, institutional capacity building).
4
The interactive approach promoted by Fox (1993, 1994, 2007) utilizes but improves on state- and society-
centred approaches to the study of reform processes by suggesting their two-way dynamic In the preliminary
review of literature on reform implementation, Fox’s approach departs from the largely statist orientation of
Thomas and Grindle (1990) and Grindle (1980) where an examination of the ‘political’ revolves mainly on state
institutions and state actors.

2
confronting and actively engaged in by the city’s urban poor, its elite and local government
reformers. 5

PRE-1989: KAANTABAY AS PRODUCT OF DEMOCRATIZATION

In this section, I particularly argue that the birth of Kaantabay is due to the politicisation of
Naga City’s urban poor in a changing political climate that quelled significant elite
opposition to the program. Kaantabay’s pro-urban poor orientation cannot be attributed to a
housing policy environment that, before 1989, hardly recognized entitlements for the urban
poor and was instead heavily governed by an anti-squatting law providing conflicting signals
on how to address the ‘urban poor problem’. 6 This section develops these arguments by
exploring first the political economy of Naga City before 1989, the political configurations
shaping in Naga City under democratization, and the resulting form in which Kaantabay was
initially implemented.

Political Economy before the 1990s

The Urban Situation

The urban area of Naga City by the late 1980s covered 21 of its 27 barangays (Naga City
Government 1988) with an urban core located in 13 barangays, and a semi-urban periphery of
8 barangays. High population densities characterized the urban core found close to major
trading centres and transport routes. Based on personal and historical accounts, informal
settlements for this period mushroomed in proximity to the Naga City public market and
surrounding barangays (Abella, Igualdad, Sabang, San Francisco and Sta. Cruz); beside
major connecting bridges and adjacent Catholic churches (Mabolo, Dayangdang, Dinaga,
Peñafrancia, Tabuco, and Tinago); and along the arterial Philippine National Railways (PNR)
which was then the principal, elitist form of inter- and intra-regional transport in Bicol

5
Specifically, Fox’s (1993) interactive framework applies largely to authoritarian and semi-authoritarian
regimes but the construction of interacting elements: reformers, elites, and social movements could be used in
analyzing major positions and relationships in reform projects, regardless of political regimes.
6
Enacted in 1975, PD 772 recognized squatting as a criminal offence in the Philippines. Conflicting with it is
PD 1515, otherwise known as the 1978 Urban Land Reform Act, which promoted the ‘modernization and
development’ of blighted areas through the declaration of ‘urban land reform zones’. In these zones, two forms
of occupancy rights are recognized: ‘legitimate’ (occupation of a lot by more than 10 years) and ‘legal’
(occupation by means of a written formal contract between landowner and occupant). (PD 772: Penalizing
Squatting and Other Acts 1975; Urban Land Reform Act 1978)

3
(Lerma and Triangulo). (Household Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011; Gerona 2003, 11,
31-38)
By an analysis of population size, population growth, and land area for three census
years: 1970, 1980 and 1990 (CPDO-Naga City 2007), the spatial concentration of informal
settlements in Naga City exhibits unique characteristics (Table 1). 7 The rise of Naga City’s
urban core appears to have occurred in the 1970s such that by 1980, the population in these
13 barangays have overtaken those in the exterior. There is no available population data by
barangay for the 1960s to compare the differences in population growth between the periods
1960-1970, and 1970-1980. What are discernable though are fluctuations in the share of the
urban core to the total population, where the 1970-1980 period marks a significant rise in the
number of people living in it. Population density provides supportive evidence particularly at
the barangay level where population densities at the urban core more than doubled from
58.52 persons/ha in the 1970s to 142.78 persons/ha in the 1980s. This would remain steady
until the 1990s but it would be apparent that at a combined density of 147 persons/ha
(compared to 33 persons/ha outside), the urban core had a highly imbalanced concentration of
people at a ratio of 4:1. This means that for every person living in Naga’s exterior barangay,
there are four persons in the urban core.
Table 1
Population Growth and Density, Naga City, 1970-1990
Particulars 1970 1980 1990
Total population size (27) 79846 90712 115329
Share to total population
Urban core bgys (13) 49.43% 57.39% 49.19%
Exterior bgys (14) 50.57% 42.61% 50.81%
Growth rate (10-year) 4.38 1.36% 2.71%
Urban core (13) - 0.79% 0.76%
Exterior (14) - 2.47% 5.39%
Population density a/ (27) 9.45 10.74 13.65
Urban core (13) 54.84 72.33 78.82
Exterior (14) 4.78 4.58 6.94
Bgy population density
Urban core (13) 58.52 b/ 142.78 147.16
Exterior (14) 27.31 c/ 23.35 33.16
Ratio by bgy pop density 2.14 6.12 4.44
Source: 2007 Naga City Statistical Profile
Notes: a/ Total area of Naga City is 8448ha, of which 719.78ha makes up the urban core and 7728.22ha the
exterior. b/ Available data for 1970 covers 8 urban core barangays. c/ Available data for 1970 covers 13
exterior barangays

7
Arithmetic progression method was used in estimating growth rates.

4
 In the 1980s through the 1990s, the high population densities in Naga City’s urban
core appear to have resulted from the premium generated by ‘centrality’ (Turner 1968, 356).
For the population, this premium centres on easy access to waged and informal occupations
because of proximity to central areas of commerce, industry and transport. Concentration in
the urban core was also induced by the relatively underdeveloped transport system and
infrastructure found in exterior and non-urban barangays. In the 1980s, the public transport
system in Naga City had not yet reached far-flung barangays (10km or more from the centro),
which were also not serviced with paved roads and bridges. In the roads inventory data of
Naga in 1987, for instance, concreted roads made up only 24% of the total road network
(155.87km) and the majority of these are mainly city roads (Office of the President of the
Philippines n.d.; Naga City Government 1996). The low population densities in remote rural
barangays also did not justify public funding for essential services such as potable water and
24-hour electricity. Insufficient local funds and national assistance were also a major factor
especially in the mid-1980s when infrastructure funds were severely diminished by a
worsening macroeconomic and political climate under the Marcos administration.
The ‘urban blight’ noted in some parts of the centro and urban core barangays (Naga
City Government 1988, 2004a) appears to have occurred not only due to the conditions
described above. It is also because of the nature of the land itself and the landholding. It is
worth emphasizing that in Naga, the lands occupied by informal settlements tend to be
privately-owned, particularly by landed elites. Because these are on private lands, informal
settlements tend to be outside the servicing of the local government which, by law, is
prohibited from using public funds to develop private lands (First UPAO Chief-Naga City
2010; BP 337: An Act Enacting A Local Government Code 1983). 8 Blighted conditions,
therefore, naturally arise from the condition of the land. The situation is likewise aggravated
by the originally marginal and unproductive nature of these private lands. In barangays like
Abella, Igualdad, Lerma, and Triangulo, some lands occupied by informal settlements are
reported to have been swampy, mosquito-ridden, flood-prone, and uninhabitable (‘kababan’)
(Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011).

8
The prohibition against the use of public funds for private purposes is contained in Sec. 34 (Principles to be
Observed) of Batas Pambansa 337 (Local Government Code), enacted in 1983. The third principle reads,
‘Public funds and monies shall be spent solely for public purposes’. In the 1991 Local Government Code, a
similar prohibition is contained in Sec. 335, which states ‘No public money or property shall be appropriated or
applied for religious or private purposes.’ According to UPAO and the local COA Office in Naga City (First
UPAO Chief-Naga City 2011; Commission on Audit-Naga City 2011), local governments do not intervene in
private lands.

5
 Naga’s urban situation by the late 1980s could explain the swelling and positioning of
its informal settlements and the uneasy tolerance with which the Naga City Government dealt
with them, particularly because the informal economy of the centro rested on them. While
first-hand accounts show that Mayor Carlos Del Castillo, who held office from 1980 to 1988,
was in open opposition with urban poor leaders and took steps to purge the city of squatters,
it was not large scale or systematic (Del Castillo 2007; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City
2010-2011). 9 Resettlement sites acquired during his term to provide for low-cost housing
(e.g., BLISS program in the Cararayan site) were too far and undeveloped; hence not cost-
effective to attract informal settlers from the urban core.

The Fiscal Situation and Local Economy

During the eight-year term of Mayor del Castillo 10 from 1979 to 1987, public finances in
Naga were dwindling because of static to low revenue generation, which led to significant
budget deficits starting in 1981. (Naga City Government 1983, 1984, 1994, 1995, 1988)
Historically a petty trade and service economy boosted by migrant investments (Gerona
2003, 68-80), Naga City relies heavily on a diversified tax and revenue base outside of its
internal revenue allotment (IRA) from the national government. 11 Available data reveal that
from 1981 to 1987, the growth of Naga’s revenue base was only 12%, of which its internal
revenue allotment grew at a modest pace of 18%. With total revenues outstripped by the
yearly increase in total expenditures by 15%, the City’s income plummeted by about 57%
yearly from 1979 to 1987. By the end of Mayor Del Castillo’s term in 1987, Naga had lost
its premiere 1st class city status in a downgrade to 3rd class by the Department of Finance
(DOF) as budget deficits soared around PhP.75million-1million from 1983 to 1987.
The prevailing fiscal situation corresponded to an anaemic local economy. (Office of
the President of the Philippines n.d., 25-26; Naga City Government 1993, 1996, 1998, 2004)
Infrastructure development; namely, construction of government facilities, flood control and
drainage, in-city and downtown roads, and streetlights appeared to be the primary thrust of
city government policy (Del Castillo 2007). In later years, however, infrastructure funds

9
In his autobiography, Mayor del Castillo mentions the acquisition of relocation sites in Cararayan, Panicuason,
and San Isidro to ‘…get rid Naga of squatters in its urban areas.’ (Del Castillo 2007, 83)
10
Mayor Del Castillo had a prescribed 6-year term from 1979 to 1984 during Marcos’ time. Under President
Aquino, another 2 years was added but only on a holdover capacity up to the 1987 local elections (Del Castillo
2007, 84).
11
In the Philippines, internal revenue allotment (IRA) is the share of local government units (LGUs) to the
revenues generated by the national government (around 40%). The IRA is determined based on a formula
dependent on population size, land area, and the principle of equal sharing thus allotments vary across
provinces, cities, municipalities, and barangays. (RA 7160: Local Government Code 1991, Sec. 284)

6
would contract together with the slowdown in the national economy due to macroeconomic
factors and natural calamities. 12 The major problems reported; specifically, vehicular
congestion around the 30-ha central business district (CBD); disorder, dirtiness, and
corruption in the Naga City public market, and beginning signs of urban blight were among
the challenges faced during the turnover of political leadership in 1988. The congestion and
blight in the downtown area were reported to be a major disincentive to development. (Naga
City Government 1988, 8) Thus, from the 1983 to 1987 when city revenues posted a laggard
growth of 1.2% per annum, revenues coming from around 2000 business establishments grew
by only 10%.
These conditions in Naga City would beckon major political figures by the close of
the 1980s when the local political scene became pervious to the political struggles occurring
at the national scene.

The Political Configuration

Naga City’s Urban Poor Movement

The urban poor movement in Naga City witnessed a turnaround from political
marginalisation to political accommodation by the end of 1980s. At the national level, this
corresponded with the era of democratization ushered into by the fall of the Marcos regime in
1986 and the entry of civil society actors and organizations in formal policy-making and
political processes (Magadia 2003; Naerssen 1989). The rise of the urban poor in Naga City
is argued to have crystallized from two critical elements: (1) the formation of horizontal and
vertical alliances: 13 the former marked by collective mobilization of urban poor
organizations, and the latter by strong NGO advocacy; and, (2) strategic and tactical access to
existing and would-be state reformers to build long-term support for its tenure agenda.

Key Horizontal and Vertical Alliances

Instrumental in the creation of horizontal alliances among Naga City’s urban poor is
collective organizing. The articulation of grievances and demands went beyond the

12
The crisis of the Marcos dictatorship in 1987 was compounded by debt burdens, the global oil crisis and
natural calamities, in which the Bicol Region was the hardest hit. Although other than poor economic
performance, the economic malaise spreading all over the country has been attributed to large-scale corruption
of government budgets and donor funds on the scale of a ‘kleptocracy’ by the Marcoses and their cronies under
Martial Law (Timberman 1991; Hutchcroft 2011).
13
Alliances are distinguished between horizontal (with groups of similar class interests and demands) and
vertical (generally external whose interests aim at facilitation and advocacy).

7
boundaries of squatter communities and more importantly, acquired a collective character in
the network of urban poor groups founded because of common grievances; namely, the lack
of basic services and institutional threats to tenure security.
Before 1989, informal settlements in Naga City were finding it already difficult to
cope with the lack of basic services (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011;
COPE-Naga City 2010a). While this has been the outright consequence of occupying
private lands where government spending is prohibited, the lack of basic services was also a
prevalent problem rooted in political marginalization, or the lack of recognition as rightful
citizens in the City. The prevailing attitude of then officials towards informal settlers tended
to border on distrust and antagonism, with urban poor leaders branded as ‘NPAs’ (from the
communist New People’s Army) or subversives (subersibo). (Urban Poor Organizations-
Naga City 2010-2011) With the dialogue even for basic services quelled, tenure did not
materialize on the agenda for engagement with the local government.
Similar to the experience in Metro Manila during the Martial Law period where open
threats to tenure security tend to fuel incipient activism among the urban poor (Rüland 1984;
Pinches 1977, 1985), tenure security became a serious concern to urban poor groups in Naga
City around 1986. Government agencies such as the Philippine National Railways (PNR)
and the local courts, by virtue of PD 772 (An Act Penalizing Squatting and Other Acts) began
to issue eviction orders to individuals and groups living in several squatter settlements in
Naga City (i.e., Abella, Sabang and Panganiban Avenue). (Naga City Urban Poor Federation
Inc. 1984-1990)
The initiative in August 1986 of a core group of urban poor organizations from five
barangays to create barangay-based ad hoc urban poor committees, 14 helped consolidate and
marshal collective action towards previously individual or community-based problems. This
core group, assisted by the Community Organization of the Philippines Enterprises
(COPE), 15 held its first joint dialogue on urban poor concerns on 17 August 1986 at the
Jesuit-run school of Ateneo de Naga. The barangay-level committees formed during the
forum strategized on collective forms of engaging with government and private sector
agencies. They spearheaded, among others, petition-signing and group dialogue with service
providers (e.g., Mabolo with Metro Naga Water District and its board members), as well as

14
These organizations were from Lerma, Mabolo, Sabang, Tinago, and Triangulo.
15
COPE is one of two groups (the other the People’s Ecumenical Action for People Empowerment) arising from
the break-up of the Philippine Ecumenical Council of Community Organization (PECCO) in 1977, a church-
based community organizing group in urban poor communities during the Martial Law Period (1972-1981) in
the Philippines. (Community Organizers Multiversity 2011)

8
with entities with pending eviction cases against informal settlers (e.g., Panganiban vs.
Philippine National Railways; Sabang vs. court order for eviction). (Angeles 1997, 99-100;
Naga City Urban Poor Federation Inc. 1984-1990)
As to vertical alliances, NGO advocacy; namely, of COPE, would be crucial
particularly in raising urban poor organizing from a settlement-based sporadic activity to a
united and coordinated front (Naga City Urban Poor Federation Inc. 1984-1990). COPE
primarily initiated collective discussion and decision-making as well as consciousness-raising
on urban poor rights through seminar-workshops and practice-sharing tours (e.g., visits to
NGOs and lobbyists in Congress). The August 1986 joint forum was particularly organized
by COPE. COPE became instrumental in building leaders among the urban poor through
leadership training, which helped institutionalize community-based consultations and
education campaigns, 16 and build the capacity for representation and advocacy work (Naga
City Urban Poor Federation Inc. 1986-2004; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-
2011).
In its issue-based advocacy, COPE was particularly successful in anchoring and
merging the demands of Naga City’s urban poor with the national agenda (Angeles 1997, 98).
Its work with the barangay-level ad hoc committees in 1986 provided the opportunity for
Naga’s urban poor to identify with the cause of similar groups in the Philippines; particularly,
with the National Congress of Urban Poor Organizations (NACUPO), which demanded from
the Aquino Government the repeal of PD 772 and the creation of a government office
dedicated solely to the urban poor. (Angeles 1997, 97-98; COPE-Naga City 2010a)
Because lobbying for the repeal of PD 772 occurred at the national level, Naga City’s urban
poor focused on demanding the creation of an Urban Poor Affairs Office around 1987 to
1989, a time in which participatory spaces were flourishing in Naga City alongside the
‘people power’ movement inspired by the Aquino presidency. 17 The collective identity that
loomed after the consolidation of alliances among themselves and with COPE - first as the
Naga City Urban Poor Ad Hoc Committee created in April 1987 and eventually, the Naga
City Urban Poor Federation Inc. founded on September 1991 - appears to have galvanized it
as a social movement, having a representative identity with its own unique agenda and
demands.

16
Around 1986, education campaigns focused largely on urban poor rights contained in the 1978 Urban Land
Reform Act and the repeal of PD 772 (Tumbaga and Sabado 2003, 322)
17
This involved the rise of various sector organizations, e.g., women’s, students and farmers groups, and multi-
sector alliances, which included militant groups. Because of this diversity, Mayor Robredo declared Naga City
a Zone of Peace and Development in 1988 to be able to establish political neutrality (Angeles 2007, 111).

9
Strategic and Extra-Institutional Access
The movement’s access to participatory spaces appears to have been strategic in rendering
visible its tenure agenda and building up support for it, particularly with critical state
reformers. In most aspects, the nature of access tends to be in the ‘extra-institutional terrain’
(Fox 1994). Naga City’s urban poor did not directly participate as a political party. Rather, it
took advantage of political resources founded on alliances and coalition-building, tactical
demand-making, and strategic lobbying with local state reformers from policy-making and
institutionalization down to the realization of material site-specific needs.
In its alliances with COPE and other PO-NGO coalitions, Naga City’s urban poor
advanced its own tenure agenda as well as articulated on demands brought about by their
alliances with national movements. It worked on consolidating support for tenure security as
a human right recognized in Naga City; and, promoting the Community Mortgage Program.18
Its involvement in the NGO-PO-political party coalition, Task Force Peace, by 1986 helped
embody the right to tenure security and basic services within the Peace Agenda for Nagueños
(Angeles 1997, 102). It also helped the movement gain access to the forum for mayoral
candidates in 1988, which would shape lobbying efforts in future local elections (Naga City
Urban Poor Federation Inc. 1986-2004). 19 Because of its alliance with COPE, the movement
had direct access to the Presidential Commission on the Urban Poor (PCUP) where a former
COPE director was appointed as commissioner. It is at this audience with the Presidential
Commission on the Urban Poor in April 1989 when the possibility of taking up the
Community Mortgage Program was first recommended to an informal settlement in Barangay
Lerma, which would later on become the first pilot CMP project in Naga City. (Naga City
Urban Poor Federation Inc. 1984-1990; COPE-Naga City 2010; Angeles 1997, 99)
The approach of the urban poor could be considered strategic and tactical at the same
time. Strategic, in being able to make use of electoral processes (Angeles 2012). Tactical, in
the ways in which they were able to penetrate and appeal to national and local power-holders
in government who helped them capitalize on shifting alignments in local politics. Its Urban
Poor Manifesto (agenda of priority demands) was articulated on two critical occasions: (i) the

18
The urban poor movement in Naga was also active in national-level issues (e.g., protest actions on oil price
increase and price rollback), here utilizing its alliances with NGO coalitions (e.g., Hearts of Peace (HOPE) and
the People’s Council for the Promotion of Rights and Welfare (PCPRW)), and activist organizations (e.g.,
Pandayan, PopDem and BAYAN) and creating multi-sector alliances with groups representing the cause of
women, farmers, fishers, and others (Angeles 1997, 102; Naga City Urban Poor Federation Inc. 1986-2004).
19
Task Force Peace, forerunner of Hearts of Peace (HOPE), consisted of a ‘loose coalition’ of POs, NGOs and
political parties active in 1986 and drew up the Peace Agenda and declared Naga City a Zone of Peace, Freedom
and Neutrality (Angeles 1997, 111). The period 1986-1988 would be a precarious time for Naga City as it was
the period of radical change in the presidency in February 1986 and the lead-up to the 1988 mayoral elections.

10
1987 Presidential Forum in Naga City chaired no less by President Aquino; and (2) the 1988
Mayoral Candidates’ Forum, of which Mr. Jesse Robredo was a candidate of the Lakas ng
Bansa party (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011; COPE-Naga City 2010a). In
the former, in support of national-level lobbying by the National Congress of Urban Poor
Organizations, the movement reiterated its call for an urban poor affairs office in Naga City,
together with their demands for basic services and tenure. In the latter, in a move that would
generate commitment from any candidate who wins the mayoral seat in Naga City, the
candidates were made to sign the Urban Poor Manifesto (Naga City Urban Poor Federation
Inc. 1986-2004). Thus, although the urban poor movement originally did not support his
party, 20 Mayor Robredo could still be held accountable for what is perceived to be a signed
commitment to fulfil the Urban Poor Manifesto. One concrete output, the creation of Naga
City’s Urban Poor Affairs Office (UPAO) in 1989 is considered by urban poor leaders to the
present day a product of this sustained lobbying (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-
2011). 21 Meanwhile, presentation of the Urban Poor Manifesto and its signing by mayoral
candidates has become a traditional tool for demand articulation and lobbying by the
movement in local elections utilized up to the present.

Naga City’s Elite

The elites in Naga City are distinguished between the political and the economic, which by a
historical study of the Bikolano elite class (Totanes 1999) refers to those who hold power by
access, respectively, to political and administrative positions (elected or appointed), and to
material bases of wealth, primarily land. It is argued that during the pre-Kaantabay period,
elite opposition to urban poor demands have been rendered immaterial or weak on both sides:
the economic elite represented by the landed owners of informal settlement sites, as well as
the political elite, represented by the quintessential anti-urban poor Mayor del Castillo who
ruled Naga City from 1979 to 1988. Two factors tend to be instrumental to the weakening of
elite positions; namely: (1) physical factors undermining the commercial value of lands in
informal settlements; and (2) political alignments and transitions, which rendered temporary
and inutile possible opposition to the urban poor, and led to eventual removal from power of
local officials considered inimical to them.
20
The movement threw their support behind Mr. Ramon S. Roco, candidate of the Cory Coalition (Kawanaka
2002, 45; Tumbaga and Sabado 2003, 322) In the 1988 local elections, Robredo ran under the Lakas ng Bansa,
the party of his uncle-political patron, Luis Villafuerte.
21
This is apart from Mayor Robredo’s creation of Naga City’s Urban Poor Affairs Committee in 1989 (EO 89-
102: Creating the Urban Poor Affairs Committee in the City of Naga 1989), a committee within the
Sangguniang Panglungsod (City Council), which deliberates on urban poor concerns.

11
 In a political setting where tenure issues were already being negotiated openly by the
urban poor, hardly any staunch opposition was reported from economic elites in Naga City.
To reiterate, this is primarily due to the originally deteriorating and undeveloped state of
private lands in which most informal settlements are located. Such conditions did not
command high commercial value thus tending to discouraging private landowners in
retaining them (Robredo 2010; Borebor III 2011; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-
2011). 22 This has been the physical condition of onsite settlements covered by this study;
where the collection of lot rents before 1989 by landowners or designated collectors were no
longer as active compared to earlier years, and some, already were under absentee
landowners. 23 Thus to the landed elite, the low commercial value of informal settlements
made these worth disposing.
On the question of whether private landowners could respond to the tenure challenge
as a political bloc, an initial review of private lands acquired by Kaantabay (UPAO-Naga
2011) suggests that their owners tend to be economic elites that for the past four decades
(e.g., Abella, Austria, Borebor, Belmonte, Lee Sing Giap) have not necessarily been active in
political elite circles. 24 Thus while the Bikol elite class traditionally held political office, a
non-traditional and non-political branch had emerged in the post-World War II period
entrenched more in civil service and business interests, to this day (Totanes 1999; Kawanaka
2002, 30-41, 87-99). Thus, economic elites in Naga City who own the lands occupied by
informal settlements are not political players. It is therefore understandable that the
economic elites dealt more with their own share of problems with the urban poor through the
courts (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011). None of the landed elites in the
informal settlements studied reported to have utilized political connections or direct political
challenge (e.g., by means of the Sanggunian Panlungsod or City Council) against the
activism brewing among the urban poor as regards tenure issues.
22
‘Lands occupied by informal settlers were unproductive as far as the owners were concerned. A reasonable
price will allow them to get the value of their properties.’ (Robredo 2010) According to one landowner
(Borebor III 2011), ‘…para samuya, walang commercial value ang property’ (‘for us, the property has no
commercial value’)
23
Based on first-hand accounts of informal settlers and landowners in several informal settlement sites (Abella,
Concepcion Pequeña. Igualdad, Lerma, Tabuco, Triangulo, and Sta. Cruz), lot rents were being collected from
households on a monthly basis, usually starting at the time when a given site is already becoming populated by
informal settlers. Monthly rents reported ranged from as low as PhP0.20 (i.e., Triangulo in the 1960s) and
PhP10.00 in the 1970s to about PhP150.00 in the 1980s (A$0.004-3.45 at Dec 2010 exchange rate
A$1=PhP43.45). The 1970s appear to be the heyday of lot rental collection. Absentee landowners are those no
longer residing in Naga City, as found in some informal settlements in Tabuco and Sta. Cruz.
24
This is to emphasize that economic elites in Naga, historically, were also active politically (Totanes 1999).
By the post-war period, the active politico-economic elites would be the Ojeda and Felipe clans who were rich
families and engaged actively in local politics; notably, Mr. Victorino Ojeda who was Naga City’s first elected
mayor in 1959; and Ramon H. Felipe Jr., who became Naga’s second in 1963 (Kawanaka 2002, 32-34).

12
 Finally, of Mayor Del Castillo, the city mayor who was staunchly anti-urban poor and
embodied the political elite class during the nascent years of urban poor activism in Naga
City (1986-1989), the transition occurring in local politics appears to have quelled the impact
of his opposition, which was unwavering even until the end of his term (Angeles 1997,
100). 25 Mayor Del Castillo was still very much in power from 1986 to 1987 but the local
government was already in transition on the lead up to the 1988 mayoral elections under the
Aquino administration. While Cory Aquino replaced all pro-Marcos leaders in most parts of
the Philippines (Timberman 1991, 171-172), Naga City was spared because of the influence
of Luis Villafuerte, the political patron of Mayor del Castillo, who made a timely defection
from Marcos to the opposition before the 1986 presidential elections. 26 (Kawanaka 2002, 38)
Thus, from 1986-1987, Mayor Del Castillo remained untouchable because of his Villafuerte
connection but was only holding power in the interim and could only remain passive as the
wave of people power movement was already engulfing Naga City, at the forefront of which
was the urban poor movement. 27
Weak elite resistance therefore could be traced to the lack of an organizing element,
whether in economic or political terms, through which their hold on land could be contested
and sustained. While Tarrow (1998, 79) suggests that social movements arise from the
support of elites divided among themselves, the functioning of elites in Naga City do not
subscribe to the same dynamics. At no point were landed or political elites the leading
influences in the rise of the Naga City urban poor movement, for instance. Likewise, instead

25
In 1986, Mayor Del Castillo refused to give in to the demands for basic services, including the demand for
humanitarian conduct of eviction notices, citing the City’s absence of jurisdiction to intervene on matters
decided on by private service providers (e.g., Metro Naga Water District) and the courts.
26
Luis Villafuerte comes from the Villafuerte clan, a traditional political elite family in Naga City. His father,
Mariano Sr., served in the Philippine legislature (1928-1931, 1931-1934) and was Camarines Sur Governor
during the Japanese period. With Marcos’ support, Luis Villafuerte strongly influenced Naga City’s politics
during the Martial Law period by having political rivals removed and entrenching his political followers;
namely, Carlos Del Castillo who served as the City’s Mayor since 1980 to 1988. (Kawanaka 2002, 34-40) In
Kawanaka’s account of power holders in Naga City, Luis Villafuerte, not Del Castillo, was considered the real
source of power. Villafuerte defected to the opposition party, United Nationalist Democratic Organization
(UNIDO), before the 1984 Batasang Pambansa elections and led the opposition’s support of Corazon Aquino in
the 1986 presidential elections.
27
In the exercise of power in the Philippine context, the access to patronage is crucial as it is with national
government patronage during the Martial Law period (1972-1981) when power was not only centralized but
concentrated on the presidency (Timberman 1991, 14-29, 82-83). This was the way in which patronage and
resources were obtained to exert political influence, particularly in the local realm. This political influence
included the removal of political rivals (mainly non-KBL politicians and considered ‘undesirables’) by doing
away with the 1975 local elections and perpetuating a system of presidential appointments for gubernatorial,
mayoral and barangay leadership posts starting 1976 until the 1980 local elections. (Wurfel 1988, 138-139;
Kawanaka 2002, 39) However, when Aquino wrested power in 1988, the removal of local government officials
identified with Marcos was undertaken for political survival by ensuring loyalty to the new regime and closing
out any opportunities for usurpation of power by Marcos supporters at the local level. Patronage relations and
the exercise of ‘vengeance’ were also contributing factors. (Timberman 1991, 171-172)

13
of factionalism, it is more the compartmentalization of the elites between the economic and
the political, which dispersed any attention on the tenure challenge posed by the urban poor
against their supposedly economic interests on the land and their exercise of political power
on behalf of such interests.

Initial Form of Kaantabay

The Kaantabay program materializing in 1989 came about as a response of Naga City’s local
government to the rising and organized clamour of its urban poor: initially, for basic services
and finally, for security of land tenure. The political marginalization that has long paralysed
the urban poor in Naga City from effective demand-making until the late 1980s underwent a
sea change because of unexpected turnarounds in national and local politics.
The first was in the turnover of government from Ferdinand Marcos to Corazon
Aquino in 1986, and the second, the mayoral elections in 1988 which saw the installation of
Jesse M. Robredo as Naga City’s 5th mayor since 1959 (Kawanaka 2002). 28 Mayor
Robredo’s pro-urban poor position, which would become a cornerstone of his own brand of
governance in Naga City, would materialize no less than in the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan
(Partners in Development) program. This program actually is the brainchild of the First
Chief of the Urban Poor Affairs Office (UPAO) created in 1989 by Mayor Robredo in
response to vigorous lobbying since 1987 by the urban poor movement. (Naga City Urban
Poor Federation Inc. 1984-1990, 1986-2004; Angeles 1997, 103; UPAO-Naga City n. d.)
As the only community-based tenure program available in the Philippines by the late
1980s (Karaos 1996, 3), the Community Mortgage Program started in August 1988 under the
United Home Lending Program (Cacnio 2001, 4) would be the initial platform on which
Kaantabay operated. Its localized set-up particularly enjoined local government units
(including NGOs) to serve as ‘partner-organizations’ or ‘originators’ for urban poor
organizations interested in availing the program (Lee 1995, 533-537). 29 Adopting the CMP
provided a cost-effective means for the City to assist urban poor groups considering the poor

28
Mayoral elections in Naga City started in 1959. Before these, mayors were appointed by the incumbent
Philippine president. Since becoming a city in 1948, Naga City had five appointed mayors, which makes Jesse
Robredo the 10th mayor since the post-war period (Kawanaka 2002, 30-31). During Martial Law, the first five
years (1972-1976) saw local officials, elected in the 1971 local elections, still in power until 1976. By the end
of their terms in 1976, local officials were replaced by Marcos with presidential appointees (Wurfel 1988, 138-
139).
29
An originator is akin to a ‘godfather organization’ particularly responsible for the ‘legal origination of the
mortgage’ (Lee 1995, 534), with services at early start-up covering liaison work between the community and
NHMFC, technical assistance (e.g., engineering surveys and plans), monitoring and ensuring completion and
processing of application documents. Originators are also expected to monitor the performance of the
community organization thereafter and assist in its needs for projects and liaison with external agencies.

14
fiscal situation inherited from the previous administration in 1989. For private landowners,
the Community Mortgage Program became the only practical and workable solution for
getting lump-sum value out of lands occupied by informal settlements. Because negotiations
would take place with the City Government representing the informal settlers, the landowners
are also saved from the intricacies and difficulty of negotiating individually with its
occupants (Abella 2012).

1989-1994: BREAKAWAY FROM A NATIONAL HOUSING PROGRAM

The years 1989-1994 were significant in serving as a transition period in which Kaantabay,
which started out under the shadows of the Community Mortgage Program in 1989 became a
City-administered program by the end of 1994. Three factors explain this transition; namely:
(1) growing disenchantment of the City Government with the Community Mortgage
Program, which with other related circumstances, resulted to its transformation into a
combined City financing/ equity scheme; (2) increasing capacity of the City Government to
self-manage social housing programs, due to improved financial recovery and the passage of
enabling national policy instruments; and, (3) the changing political environment, marked on
one hand, by rising influence of the urban poor movement in socialized housing and local
governance reforms, and the other, by a re-election campaign witnessing the birth of Mayor
Robredo’s political machine. These factors are each explained in this section.

Community Mortgage Program and Site Upgrading

Initial Participation and Experience of the Naga City Government

In the early years of Kaantabay from 1989 to 1993, the Naga City Government played a
minor role in its facilitation. With informal settlement sites in Barangays Cararayan and
Lerma, the earliest acquired in 1980 and 1993, respectively, the City did not fully sponsor
and finance.
National-level government agencies were the major sponsors of the two earliest
Kaantabay sites in line with housing assistance programs to typhoon victims and national
shelter program directives founded in the late 1980s. The Department of Social Welfare and
Development developed the Cararayan core shelter site to originally cater to Naga-based
households displaced by typhoons (DSWD-Chief 2010; DSWD-Officer 2011). The then

15
National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation financed the Lerma Urban Poor Association
(LUPA) under the Community Mortgage Program. 30 In the Cararayan site, the City
Government provided land as counterpart. In the Lerma site, it served as originator in line
with the Community Mortgage Program’s start-up process thereby becoming the first local
government unit to do so in the entire Philippines (Tumbaga and Sabado 2003, 326). 31
As CMP originator, the Naga City Government went on to assist several urban poor
groups, particularly in organizing, negotiating with landowners, education and information
dissemination, physical surveys, and reviewing/ submitting application forms (Naga City
Government 1994; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011). Several organizations
would apply for the Community Mortgage Program from barangays Abella, Igualdad,
Peñafrancia, Sabang, and Sta. Cruz. Of these, only two organizations would successfully
avail the program in 1993; namely, the Lerma Urban Poor Association and Igualdad Zone 5
HOA.
Apart from the Community Mortgage Program, the Urban Poor Affairs Office began
several upgrading projects in selected informal settlements around the City (e.g., Triangulo,
Abella). By this time, the local office of the Commission on Audit had relaxed the
prohibition of using government funds in informal settlements owned by private landowners
on the condition that improvements would not be disturbed for a minimum period of five
years to be able to recoup government expenses. (First UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010; Naga
City Government 1993, 1994) In these upgraded sites, however, tenure issues were still left
untouched.

Disenchantment with CMP and an Accidental Scheme

Disenchantment with the Community Mortgage Program arose due to bureaucratic red tape
and the frequent change of documentation and other requirements (First UPAO Chief-Naga
City 2010; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011). For instance, it took the Lerma
Urban Poor Association almost five years, from December 1989 to June 1993 to have their

30
The CMP was adopted by the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation under the Philippines’ National
Shelter Program in 1992, in accordance with the 1992 Urban Development and Housing Act. By 2004,
responsibility for the CMP and other socialized housing projects were transferred to the Social Housing Finance
Corporation, a newly created agency under Executive Order 272. (EO 272: Authorizing the Creation of the
Social Housing Finance Corporation 2004)
31
By participating in their inception, the City recognizes the Cararayan and Lerma sites as Kaantabay sites
(UPAO-Naga City 2011; Prilles 2004, 32-33). Of the two, the Cararayan site has been subsumed fully under
Kaantabay by the late 1990s when its beneficiaries started paying amortization to the city to be able to own the
lands originally handed down as usufruct by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-
Officer 2011; Interviews-Households 2010-2011). The Lerma site remains independent in paying amortizations
to the Socialized Housing Finance Corporation. (Interviews-Households 2010-2011)

16
CMP application approved. The second and last to be acquired through this program in
December 1993, the Igualdad Z-5 Association, would go through the same arduous process
for four years.
Not until the MITRA association (Bgy Peñafrancia) applied for the program did its
time-consuming procedures, voluminous requirements, including changing NHMFC policies
and guidelines, overwhelm the City Government (Naga City Government 1993; First UPAO
Chief-Naga City 2010; Second UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010). This involved the processing
of 428 applications, thrice more than LUPA (78 applications) and Igualdad (64 applications)
combined. The application dragged on for three years. With its patience tested to the limit,
the Archdiocese of Caceres which owned the land occupied by the association, threatened to
pull out of its agreement with the City to sell the property at only 25% of its market value, or
an amount of PhP11 million. If not paid within a certain period, the Archdiocese threatened
to forfeit the original deal and renegotiate for a higher selling price.
The timely response of MITRA residents and the City would prove to be a crucial
turning point in the emergence and institutionalization of a scheme that would be unique to
Kaantabay (First UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010). To raise PhP11M in so short a time, the
residents agreed to shell out however much they could to pay the full or partial acquisition
cost of their homelots. The City, on the other hand, committed to cover the balance and
convert it into a loan that could be amortized by each individual applicant depending on the
unpaid portion of the homelot. MITRA residents were able to raise PhP4M while the City
Government obtained PhP7M financing from the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP), and
the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS). As the City faced the technicality of
accepting payments for land not yet owned, the money raised by the households were listed
as ‘deposits’ first then later converted into ‘payments’ once MITRA’s property title was
effectively transferred to the City.
The MITRA case enabled the City Government to come up with a scheme for
socialized housing, which according to UPAO, was no longer dependent on the national
government for funding (First UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010). This enabled the City to do
away with CMP, thus there were only two successful CMP applications by 1993.
The collaboration witnessing the pooling of resources of the City Government with
urban poor organizations, as realized for the MITRA property, became the basis for a City-
financed cum equity scheme (amortization at cost over a certain period) that would be
adopted starting 1994 for the rest of informal settlement sites interested to avail of socialized

17
housing in Naga City. 32 This scheme provided the opportunity for onsite settlements to
access not only site upgrading but also for its resident-households to acquire their homelots
through amortization. The same financing scheme is applied to offsite resettlements.

Financial Recovery
The period of 1989 to 1993 coincided with the City making an impressive financial recovery
from its disastrous financial situation until the mid-1980s (Naga City Government 1988,
1993). Naga City received recognition from the Department of Finance for exemplary fiscal
management in 1988, of which increases in revenue (82%) and budget surplus (126%),
enabled it to regain its first-class status in 1990. Its dependency on internal revenue
allotments (IRA) hovered at 60% compared to 70-90% for other LGUs. (Naga City
Government 1996, 22-24) From 1989 to 1993, the City realized a yearly increase in revenue
close to 40%, largely accounted for by rising real property and business taxes and its
operation of the Naga City Public Market. By 1993, the City’s income ballooned to
PhP126million or about six times the amount in 1987, to realize a surplus of PhP23million, a
historical high.
Improved financial performance impacted well on socialized housing efforts of the
City Government as it helped enhance its credit worthiness to be able to fortuitously obtain
credit lines from government institutions to finance lot acquisition for the MITRA property
and later on to finance land acquisition activities outside of the Community Mortgage
Program. In 1993, three city ordinances were passed authorizing Mayor Robredo to secure
credit lines from three major government banks for land acquisition, while one ordinance
helped create an UPAO trust fund to absorb the origination fees gathered from the program
(Naga City Government 1993). By 1994, the creditworthiness of the City Government
further improved with a 152% growth in annual income. This made it possible to secure a
PhP20million LBP credit line to pursue its own socialized housing and land acquisition
programs. (Robredo 2010; Naga City Government 1993)

32
The scheme is referred to as ‘city financed cum equity scheme’ which combines the financing provided by the
City Government for about 85-90% of the financing cost and the equity raised by urban poor households for 10-
15% of the balance. The amount covered by the City serves as the loan of the urban poor organization,
structured in terms of monthly amortization payments (computed on the basis of lot sizes including interest and
penalties for late payments) to be paid out by individual households. Because of different lot sizes occupied, the
loans assumed by individual households in onsite settlements vary. It is in offsite settlements where the uniform
lot sizes result to equal amortization payments by concerned households.

18
Enabling National Policies
Three major policy frameworks appear to exert the most influence; namely, the 1991 Local
Government Code (RA 7160), the 1992 Urban Development and Housing Act (RA 7279),
and the 1994 Comprehensive and Integrated Shelter Financing Act (RA 7835).
The 1991 Local Government Code expanded the responsibility of Philippine cities (in
the same vein as Philippine provinces) over mass housing 33 (Sec. 17) and associated powers
as regards resource generation and utilization (Sec. 18), exercise of eminent domain (Sec. 19)
land reclassification (Sec. 20), real property acquisition and contracting (Sec. 22) grant
sourcing and negotiation (Sec. 22), and credit financing (Secs. 295-297).
The 1992 Urban Development and Housing Act, a product of activism and
programmatic demand-making by urban poor, civil society and church networks (Karaos
1995, 19-43; Magadia 2003, 93-112), placed local governments in the driver seat of
implementing urban development and housing reforms (Sec. 39). It contained specific
mandates for: (1) systematic and diversified modes to the identification, acquisition and
financing as well as disposition of lands for socialized housing (Secs. 9-12, 31-32, 42); 34 (2)
participatory engagement of beneficiaries, including promoting their organization and self-
management (Secs. 23, 33) as well as consultative and procedural eviction and demolition
(Sec. 28); (3) coordinated provision of basic services in socialized housing sites (Sec. 21); 35
(4) private sector participation in socialized housing through combined mandatory measures
36
and incentives; respectively, compulsory balanced housing development (Sec. 18), and
37
subsidized entry and incentivization (Sec. 20); and, (5) removal of ‘illegality’ (occupants of
danger/ hazard zones and public land) through mandatory relocation and resettlement of

33
These government programs are the Social Security System (SSS), Government Service and Insurance
System (GSIS), and the Home Development Mutual Fund (HDMF).
34
These include land inventory-taking for socialized housing (Sec. 9), land acquisition modalities applicable for
private and government lands which includes the Community Mortgage Program established since 1989 (Sec.
10-11, 31), alternative forms of land disposition (e.g., purchase, lease, usufruct, purchase option) (Sec. 12), and
fund sourcing and generation through resource sharing, foreign assistance, tax proceeds, sale of public lands and
public-private sector partnerships (Sec. 42).
35
This is in coordination with the National Housing Authority, private developers and other concerned agencies
36
Balanced housing development requires residential subdivision developers to allocate 20% of total land area
developed or the total development cost to socialized housing. In Naga City, Ordinance No. 2000-022 was
enacted on 06 March 2002 to particularly ensure balanced housing would be implemented strictly within Naga
City (Naga City Government 2002b). This territorial specification is reported to have been a major issue od
debate between the Naga City Urban Poor Federation and some city councillors who were proposing that the
provision could be arbitrarily applied within or outside of Naga (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-
2011).
37
Incentives aimed to reduce transactional and financial costs and tax obligations of landowners for them to be
encouraged to sell lands for socialized housing. These covered simplified qualification, accreditation, licensing
and financing procedures, tax exemptions, and tax credits.

19
(Secs. 29-30, and cooperation with beneficiaries against the entry of professional squatting
syndicates in assisted sites. (RA 7279: Urban Development and Housing Act 1992)
The 1994 Comprehensive and Integrated Shelter Financing Act, which laid out
housing production and finance reforms attendant to the implementation of the National
Shelter Plan 38 under the leadership of the National Housing Authority, spelled out the parallel
functions of local government units particularly in cost-recovery programs, local housing,
and medium-rise public and private housing (Sec. 4). (RA 7835: Comprehensive and
Integrated Shelter and Urban Development Financing Act (CISFA) 1994)
By the manner in which Kaantabay operated from 1989 to 1994, the Naga City
Government utilized these policy instruments to the extent possible. In the absence of its
own written policy guidelines until 1998, these national policies became the primary bases
for program implementation (First UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010) in such important areas as
land acquisition (modalities and procedural elements), funds sourcing, community
improvements, and repayment management . 39 As will be shown in the next section, in the
years following 1994, these policy reforms would be responsible for transforming Kaantabay
into an ‘organically-enabling’ tenure reform program self-managed by the Naga City
Government.

Changing Local Politics

The Urban Poor Movement and Local State Reformers

From 1989 to 1994, the alliances with and facilitation of local state reformers enabled the
urban poor movement in Naga City to reap significant achievements in policy. In their
dealings with Mayor Robredo and supportive members of the Sangguniang Panglungsod
(City Council), the urban poor combined direct formal access consisting of monthly
dialogues with the Mayor (institutionalized since April 1989) or his assigned representatives,
as well as ‘groundwork’ through consultations and informal meetings (Angeles 1997;
Tumbaga and Sabado 2003; Naga City Urban Poor Federation Inc. 1986-2004).

38
The year of 1994 also coincided with the shift in World Bank policy and influence over the housing policy of
developing countries, particularly emphasizing what appears to be ‘programmatic’ incursion into the previously
pure state control of housing finance through institutional restructuring and development of housing finance
systems (Pugh 2000, 1992).
39
It was only in 1998, in the passage of the The ‘Kaantabay sa Kauswagan’ Ordinance of 1997 (Ordinance No.
98-033) that program policies became laid out in concrete form, although the ordinance in itself was adapted
largely from the 1992 UDHA.

20
 The strategies utilized by the urban poor movement appear to have been effective in
the passage of pro-urban poor tenure policies, with special relevance to Kaantabay (Table 2).
Among these would be the: (1) tripartism strategy of negotiating land tenure issues involving
the City Government and landowners; (2) recognition of expropriation as a last-resort but
viable alternative to acquire land for socialized housing; and (3) the identification of existing
and potential informal settlement sites eligible for assistance under Kaantabay. In particular,
the tripartism strategy would inspire people empowerment initiatives institutionalized in the
City by 1995 (Shatkin 2008). The Naga City Urban Poor Federation, the umbrella group of
urban poor organizations in the city, would participate actively in two formal policy-making
structures with tripartite composition (LGU-NGO-PO): the Naga City-NGO-PO council
established in 1991 and the Naga City Urban Development and Housing Board (henceforth
the Housing Board), created in 1993. The Federation sits in the former as a representative of
the urban poor sector, and in the latter, as PO counterpart for socialized housing concerns.
Table 2
Policy Contributions of the Naga City Urban Poor Federation to Kaantabay and
Related Housing Programs, 1990-1993

Year Policies
Humane conduct of court-imposed eviction orders (approved city
1990
resolution)
1990 Expropriation as pro-urban poor tenure solution (City resolution)
Tri-sectoral strategy (tripartism) as institutional mechanism for
1991-1993
resolving urban poor problems
Declaration of Blighted Areas as Sites for Socialized Housing (Ord#
1992
92-048)
Creation of the Naga City Urban Development and Housing Board
1993
(Ord. No. 93-057)
Appointment of three urban poor representatives as members of the
1993
Housing Board (EO 93-006)

Sources: Naga City Urban Poor Federation (1986-2004), Sangguniang Panglunsod-Naga City (1992); Naga City
Government (1993); Ateneo Social Science Research Center (2003)

Other than tenure policies, the urban poor’s access to power-holders in Naga City as
well as alliance and coalition-building helped them figure significantly in the passage of local
governance policies which intended to expand participatory and transparency processes to the
broad populace, inclusive of the urban poor (Table 3).

21
 Table 3
Policy Influences on Local Governance by the Naga City Urban Poor, 1991-1993
Year Policies
Creation of the Bicol Urban Poor Coordinating Council (BUPCC), with Naga
1991
City as founding member
1991- Creation of the Naga City Urban Poor Federation and ratification of Constitution
1993 and By-Laws
1991 Membership of the Urban Poor in the Naga City-NGO-PO Council
Designation of Urban Poor sector as sectoral representative to the Sangguniang
1992
Panglungsod (City Council) (approved city resolution)
Creation of Naga City Socialized Program for Empowerment and Economic
1993
Development
Sources: Naga City Urban Poor Federation Inc. (1986-2004); Angeles (1997); Ateneo Social Science Research
Center (2003); Robredo (2006)

Thus, by 1994, the urban poor have evolved into a position of political influence
through formal incorporation into the City’s people-based governance structures. PO
representation in these tripartite structures particularly carved out a political space by which
their interests and demands for housing as well as non-housing concerns could be articulated,
contested and sustained.

The Makings of Mayor Robredo’s Political Machine

Two events appear to have made it imperative for Mayor Robredo to build his own political
machine in Naga City from 1989 to 1994: (1) the breakdown of his relations, after the 1988
mayoral elections, with his uncle-political patron, Luis Villafuerte, who since martial law had
exerted political influence in the City through the mayoralty; 40 and (2) the political necessity
not only of re-election in 1992 but also of a party-dominated city council to continue his
platform of reforms yet unfinished in 1991. 41
Although Luis Villafuerte’s intrusion into Naga City’s affairs have been shielded in
part by its political independence as a ‘independent component city’, 42 the need for Mayor
Robredo to develop his own political following rests on the vastness of the former’s
grassroots networks built in the days of martial law and through almost 10 years of control
via Mayor Del Castillo. Meanwhile, Mayor Robredo endured difficulties in passing reforms

40
Mayor Robredo hails from the Villafuerte clan, and is the nephew of Luis Villafuerte. They are connected via
Mayor Robredo’s grandfather and Luis Villafuerte’s mother who are siblings to a common father (Kawanaka
2002, 44).
41
Political patronage of Luis Villafuerte on Mayor Robredo started before he became mayor in 1988. His
appointment as director of the Bicol River Basin Development Program (BRBDP) in 1986 came at the behest of
Villafuerte. The cause of their animosity remains unknown although allegedly, it is because of disagreements
to the stopping of jueteng, an illegal numbers game, in Naga City (Kawanaka 2002, 43-48).
42
In being an independent component city, Naga City is not required to vote for provincial officials. This is a
point made by the current City Planning and Development Office Coordinator, Mr. Wilfredo Prilles (Prilles
2012).

22
during his first term (1988-1991) due to his party’s minority in the city council, hence the
need for a complete sweep of city council seats in forthcoming elections. This was meant to
be achieved through a bold campaign locally named Ubos kung ubos, Gabos kung gabos,43
which would require massive grassroots support to execute. The slogan implies a campaign
strategy that leaves no room for defeat not only by the party (‘ubos’ - all) but by all party
mates (‘gabos’ – everyone). This means exclusive and landslide victory for Robredo’s party
as the ultimate objective.
What Luis Villafuerte possesses in the number of followers and patronage relations
developed since Martial Law (breadth), Mayor Robredo compensated for in terms of depth in
cultivating a political machine tightly connected top-to-bottom, or from the city down to the
barangay level. In this manner, Mayor Robredo adeptly took advantage of the barangay,
which happens to be the historical seat of political machines in the country even in the pre-
war and pre-Martial Law era (Machado 1971, 1186-1192; Wurfel 1988, 91, 138-139). 44
Kawanaka’s (2002, 74-80) account of the two core organizations in Mayor Robredo’s
political machine; namely, the Lakas ng Kababaihan ng Naga Federation (Strength of Naga’s
Women) and the Barangay Peoples’ Organization (reorganized into the Barangay Peoples
Foundation), and their conversion into the Lingkod Barangay Office and its bevy of sector-
based organizations suggests the formation of grassroots-level groups out to perform political
functions. Organizing and recruitment in these organizations ran ‘pyramid’-style where
central operations run at the top and expands down to the lowest base of support. This
involves, in general, the creation of a core group of officers at the city level, to the selection

43
Some authors translate this campaign slogan to ‘nothing if nothing, all if all’ (Kawanaka 2002, 88) and ‘all or
nothing’ (Angeles 2007, 237), with the latter taking reference to the former’s earlier study. These translations
appear to be quite literal as the slogan suggests an alternative yet stronger but implicit translation – ‘all and
everyone’.
44
Wurfel (1988) traces the beginnings of this politicization of the barangay since 1956 from a combination of
strategic events namely the implementation of community development programs under President Ramon
Magsaysay (1953-1957), enactment of the 1959 Barrio Charter and pouring of development funds for barangay
development projects from US and government sources. However, Machado (1971) traces barangay
politicization much earlier in the 1930s in his study of six towns in Luzon and Visayas. Here, factionalism is
considered to have evolved from serving traditionally locality-based political contests to ensuring victories also
to provincial and national-level politicians (for continuing access to resources vs. increasing demands of
constituencies) thus necessitating a more specialized method of fostering and strengthening allies from the
barangays, particularly barangay captains. Barangay captains (which Wurfel refers to as barangay ‘lieutenants’)
became political actors allied with incumbent mayors, higher-level politicians or political aspirants, and became
the base of political factions. These barangay leaders particularly engage in mutual exchange relationships for
‘projects, patronage, and personal favors’ in return for votes for ruling factions (Machado 1971). During
Martial Law, President Marcos targeted the barangay as the cornerstone of his ‘personal, nationwide’ political
machine.

23
of leaders or coordinators at the barangay, and membership recruitment per zone in the
barangay. 45
It is this political machine that will figure critically in Mayor Robredo’s re-election
for two more back-to-back terms from 1992-1998, and a comeback from 2002-2010, for an
unprecedented six terms in office as Mayor of Naga City. Thus, the Kaantabay program and
Mayor Robredo virtually share the same political timeline, which makes it possible for the
program to reflect the political priorities and compromises entered by his administration over
the program’s life of 20 years. This happened more so, as argued in the next section, when
Kaantabay became a full-fledged undertaking of the Naga City Government.

1994 onwards: Kaantabay as ‘Organically Enabling’ and Politicized Local

Housing Program
1994 was the coming-out year for Kaantabay, with policy, institutional, operational, and
financial mechanisms in force for self-administration by the Naga City Government. I
particularly argue that the ‘organically-enabling’ form of the Kaantabay program started in
1994 when, as elaborated in previous sections, a combination of Naga City’s unique history
of urban poor organizing and a peculiar transition period triggered a local adaptation of the
state ‘enabling’ strategy. Thus, while local government-based housing tenure programs in the
Philippines have been considered the ‘enabling’ ideal (Shatkin 2007, 13), Naga City’s
Kaantabay would additionally be ‘organically enabling’ in not constituting a policy transfer
or engineered adaptation of an international policy model as done, for instance, under the
‘sites and services’ approach from the 1970s to early 1980s (Skinner, Taylor, and Wegelin
1987; Pugh 1995). From 1994 onwards, it is further argued that the program would evolve
under prevailing national housing policies containing ‘enabling’ elements, and the political
imperatives under which Mayor Robredo ruled Naga City for an unprecedented six terms
(1988-2010). To elaborate on these arguments, the succeeding discussion is structured in
three parts: (1) overview of Naga City’s changing political economy; (2) Kaantabay’s
organically enabling form under Naga City Government’s administration, including
management of political relationships with the urban poor movement and elites; and, (3)
Kaantabay’s politicization under Mayor Robredo’s political machine.

45
The set-up is generalized based on similar characteristics. There is a slight variation for the Lakas ng
Kababaihan where chapters are created per barangay zone.

24
Kaantabay as Organically-Enabling

Policy Framework
In Kaantabay, the key policy elements of ‘enabling’ appear to have been operationalized in
two periods. First, from 1994 when it became fully administered by the City but without its
own policy framework until 1997. Second, from 1998, when the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan
ordinance was passed by the Sangguniang Panlungsod, to the present time.
From 1994 to 1997, Kaantabay operated without a black-and-white policy for
implementation, except for conditions imposed on procedural aspects like lot occupancy,
amortization payments and awarding of lots, and violations such as illegal occupancy and
professional squatting generally based on national policy frameworks (Household
Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011). These
often came either in the form of verbal advice and written notices (normally for unpaid
amortizations or unauthorized occupation) from the Urban Poor Affairs Office or the City
Mayor. A review of available documents of the Housing Board in 1995 and 1996 showed
that conditions were laid out for regulating lot allocations for onsite and offsite settlements,
rights selling, squatting control, socialized housing development (e.g., balanced housing
development), repayment management (e.g., subsidy schemes) as well as criteria for defining
‘urban poor’. (Naga City Urban Development and Housing Board 1995, 1996) Meanwhile,
deliberations held by the Sangguniang Panlungsod in 1996 showed that conditions were set
out governing the issuance of deeds of sale in Kaantabay-assisted sites. However, none of
these conditions or criteria were incorporated in a coherent written formal policy on
Kaantabay from 1994 to 1997.
The second period covering 1998 onwards becomes relevant because it was only in
1998 that formal program policies where enshrined through City Ordinance No. 98-033, or
more popularly known as the 1997 Kaantabay sa Kauswagan Ordinance. The 1997
Kaantabay ordinance was patterned literally after the 1992 Urban Development and Housing
Act, containing almost identical terms and provisions, and particularly vesting gargantuan
responsibilities in the Naga City Housing Board for its implementation. 46 The ordinance

46
Based on Sec. 9 (Powers and Responsibilities) of the Kaantabay ordinance (No. 98-033), the Naga City
Housing Board is expected to engage not only in policy-making but also in development planning and review
(not solely on land development and housing), design of registration systems (program beneficiaries) and
consultative measures (private sector participation in socialized housing), curtailment of professional squatting,
promotion of humane relocation and resettlement, urban environmental management, and the implementation
and development of socialized housing programs. These legislated functions of the Naga City Housing Board

25
stood out as distinct in mandating the 10% allocation of the city budget (net of administrative
expenses and salaries) for urban poor programs. (Ateneo Social Science Research Center
(ASSRC) 2003) The passage for the ordinance particularly coincided with the last term in
office of Mayor Robredo in 1998, after serving three consecutive terms since 1988. Thus, in
urban poor circles, the 1997 Kaantabay ordinance is believed to be political insurance for the
urban poor such that even after Mayor Robredo’s departure, urban poor reforms would
remain institutionalized (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011; Naga City
Housing Board 2010).

Institutional Elements
The institutional elements of Kaantabay adopts the ‘enabling’ form wherein housing reform
implementation is structured in the merging of top-down and bottom-up approaches and
multi-stakeholder involvement (Pugh 1994). Initially, Kaantabay’s implementing structure
was founded largely on the active engagement of urban poor organizations from below, and
the active facilitation and leadership of the City Government from above.
Particularly in the years following the City’s handling of the program in 1994, urban
poor organizations, with the help of NGOs like COPE, became more active in organizing
their member-households, conducting information dissemination, and representing them in
negotiations with landowners over land acquisition and pricing. The wave of organizing at
the community level, started during the heyday of the Community Mortgage Program, further
intensified especially in onsite settlements attracted by the opportunity to own lands in
exchange for city financing. Unlike the CMP, transaction costs were much lower because
urban poor organizations were dealing directly with the City Government with much simpler
documentary requirements. (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011)
The City Government, represented mainly by three bodies; namely, the Office of the
City Mayor, the Naga City Housing Board (where the LGU is a partner), and the Urban Poor
Affairs Office served leadership and oversight functions, policy-making and dispute
resolution, and day-to-day implementation, respectively. (UPAO n. d.) At the middle ground
are partner NGOs (of urban poor organizations), national-level agencies and private sector
entities cooperating with the City Government, and landowners (private and institutional),
which converge with the urban poor and the City Government on land negotiation issues.

tend to overlap with the functions of at least three City Government offices; namely, the Urban Poor Affairs
Office, City Planning and Development Office, and City Environmental and Natural Resources Office.

26
 The tripartism strategy for resolving land issues, which involved the engagement of
three key parties - urban poor organizations, the City Government, and NGOs - particularly
held these institutional elements together, a strategy considered unique and central to the
Kaantabay experience (Naga City Government 2003; Shatkin 2008). In recent years,
tripartism is still in force, with land disputes involving settlers on government land (e.g.,
Philippine National Railways) and private property still mediated by NGOs and the City
Government (Concepcion Pequena Bgy Council 2011; COPE-Naga City 2011a).

Program Strategies
Under an ‘enabling’ policy environment, Naga City was able to self-manage socialized
housing projects, particularly in: (1) undertaking a mix of land acquisition, administration,
and financing strategies; and, (2) exercising leverage against private landowners for land
acquisition and land banking.

Land Acquisition, Administration and Financing

The City was able to undertake Kaantabay through various acquisition, administration, and
financing strategies, which as presented in Table 4, reflect the combined impact of expanded
powers, authority and initiatives offered by the aforementioned 1991-1994 policies. (Naga
City Government 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998a, 2000, 2001a, 2002a, 2003a, 2004a, 2005;
Robredo 1996, 2004a) In particular, the trend in land acquisition (Figure 1) indicates
substantial increases after 1994.
Table 4
Acquisition, Administration, and Financing Strategies of Kaantabay, 1994-2005
No. Strategies Policy Influence
Credit line and mortgage financing from government
1991 LGC
1 banks (e.g., Land Bank of the Philippines, Philippine
1992 UDHA
Veterans Bank)
Direct contracting of land acquisition and sale with
private landowners and institutional owners 1991 LGC
2
(Archdiocese of Caceres, Philippine Veterans Bank) 1992 UDHA
through deeds of exchange or sale
1992 UDHA
3 Land acquisition in various forms
1994 CISFA
1991 LGC
4 Community upgrading projects
1992 UDHA
Lot amortization to beneficiary households in
5 1994 CISFA
participating onsite and offsite settlements
Land banking through direct negotiation with private 1991 LGC
6
landowners, including inventory-taking of blighted 1992 UDHA

27
 No. Strategies Policy Influence
areas for socialized housing
Grant acquisition from the National Housing
7 1994 CISFA
Authority for resettlement site development
8 Land donation from private commercial developers 1992 UDHA
Land reclassification from agricultural to non-
9 1991 LGC
agricultural purposes
Maintenance of UPAO trust fund (originally
dedicated to CMP origination fees until made a
10 1992 UDHA
repository of annual collections from lot
amortization)
Sources: Naga City Government (1993-2005); Second UPAO Chief-Naga City (2010)

Figure 1

Trend of Lot Acquisition for Kaantabay-Assisted Sites,

Naga City Government, 1989-2010

20
20

15 13

10 No. of Sites
6

5
1

0
Pre-1989 1989-1993 1994-2000 2001-2010

*Year of land acquisition is based on Contract to Sell (Prilles 2004, 32-33; UPAO-Naga City 2011, 2008)

In 2010, the official data shows 41 Kaantabay-assisted sites, 20 offsite and 21 onsite
projects, with a combined total area of 85.35ha, and a beneficiary size of 6557 households
(Table 5). Offsite settlements take up 76% of total area and 70% of household coverage.
These settlements are relatively larger at 3.22ha on average compared to only 1.16ha for
onsite.
Table 5
Program Size, Kaantabay Program, 2010
Particulars No. of Sites Area (ha) No. of Beneficiaries
Onsite 21 20.89 1978
Offsite 20 64.46 4579
Total 41 85.35 6557
*Year of land acquisition is based on Contract to Sell (Prilles 2004, 32-33; UPAO-Naga City 2011, 2008)

28
 Kaantabay-assisted sites refer to all those settlements managed directly by the City
Government or those acquired with its assistance either as originator (for CMP projects) or in
providing land as counterpart (core shelter/ GK/ Habitat projects). The 2010 list includes two
core shelter sites initially funded by the Department of Social Welfare and Development
(DSWD), two sites acquired under the Community Mortgage Program (Lerma and Igualdad),
one site under the Localized Community Mortgage Program (Concepcion Pequeña), and two
low-cost housing sites being developed separately by the Gawad Kalinga (GK) and Habitat
for Humanity (Balatas).
By 2010, the estimated land acquisition cost for 41 Kaantabay-assisted sites is
PhP122.77million (A$2.82million). 47 (Prilles 2004, 32-33; UPAO-Naga City 2011, 2008) Of
these, the equity counterpart paid by urban poor beneficiary-households amounts to about
PhP25.19million (A579954.00).
Land acquisition activities are financed from the combination of credit financing from
government banks (Land Bank and Development Bank of the Philippines), IRA allocations to
socialized housing (estimated at PhP20million annually), and the utilization of the General
Fund. The General Fund contains the Urban Poor Trust Fund, an account receiving the total
of amortization payments collected as well as funds generated from the balanced housing
contribution of real estate developers in Naga City. The trust fund also receives an allocation
from the Local Development Fund (LDF) appropriated by the Office of the Mayor. (Second
UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010; Naga City Government 2010) The same sources are used for
land development (upgrading and site development) although for some sites and in recent
years, this has been undertaken by the City in partnership with the National Housing
Authority (e.g., Pacol and Queborac), World Bank (e.g., Triangulo, Lerma and Balatas), and
as mentioned, private sector providers; namely, Gawad Kalinga and Habitat for Humanity
(Balatas).
The use of diverse funding sources for land acquisition and development appears
necessary considering that the use of city funds for socialized housing is possible but only on
a limited scale based on the trend in revenue and surplus generation. Available data on the
financial performance of Naga City (Naga City Government 1979-2009) shows the increase
in revenues from PhP173.92million in 1994 to about PhP534.75million in 2009, an annual
increase of 10.49%. However, accompanying this is the negative growth in budget surplus
of -1.80% for the same period, showing 6 years of deficit spending by the City. These years

47
Australian equivalents based on the Dec 2010 exchange rate of PhP1=43.45.

29
particularly started in 1994 (PhP0.428million) up to 2000 (PhP4.40million), the first 7 years
that Kaantabay was City-administered. Budget deficits grew by about 45.4% for this period.
Only in 2001 did the City recover, from then on posting a budget surplus of 32.12% annually
until 2009.

Acquisition of Private Lands

National policy instruments were instrumental in enabling the City Government to acquire
private lands for the program (UPAO-Naga City 2011). In retrospect, this approach stands in
contrast with Philippine national policy where private lands are in the lowest level of priority
for socialized housing (RA 7279: Urban Development and Housing Act 1992).
Facilitating the City’s acquisition of private lands is Section 8 of the 1992 Urban
Development and Housing Act, which called for an inventory of blighted areas for socialized
housing at the local government level. Through City Ordinance No. 92-048 (Sangguniang
Panlungsod-Naga City 1992), 106 pockets of ‘blighted areas’ were identified, found in 19
barangays and totalling 86.63ha. The inventory further shows that these ‘blighted areas’ are
in lands owned by about 79 families.
Of 41 Kaantabay-assisted sites, only six were originally on government land (City
Government and Philippine Veterans Bank) while the majority used to be under private,
commercial and institutional ownership (Table 6). Private landowners, coming from 28
prominently families, formerly owned 30 of the 41 Kaantabay-assisted sites (UPAO-Naga
City 2011). These account for about 73% of the total. For the other four non-government
sites, landownership was formerly under two commercial establishments (Metroland
Properties and LBC), and one religious institution (Archdiocese of Caceres).

Table 6
Ownership of Kaantabay-Assisted Sites, Naga City, 2010
By Number of Sites By Total Area (hectares)
Type of Ownership Offsite Onsite Total
Offsite Onsite Total
(20) (21) (41)
Non-Government
Private 12 18 30 38.24 13.44 51.68
Commercial 1 1 2 1.70 - 1.70
Religious 1 1 2 1.00 5.50 6.50
Government
City Government 5 1 6 21.85 0.87 22.72
Philippine Veterans Bank 1 - 1 1.67 - 1.67

Non-Government 14 20 34 40.94 18.94 59.88

30
 By Number of Sites By Total Area (hectares)
Type of Ownership Offsite Onsite Total
Offsite Onsite Total
(20) (21) (41)
Government 6 1 7 23.52 0.87 24.39
Source: UPAO-Naga City (2011, 2008); Prilles (2004, 32-33)

Specific to private lands, the passage of the 1992 Urban Development and Housing
Act proved especially auspicious to the City in providing the basis: first, for tax incentives to
private landowners to release their lands for socialized housing projects; and second, for
exploring various land acquisition modalities. Incentives for private landowners came in the
form of tax exemptions and tax credits, which according to Tumbaga and Sabado (2003, 329-
330) proved advantageous to those incurring large tax arrears against the City.
After the Community Mortgage Program, the City embarked on several options for
acquiring private land, as provided for under the 1992 Urban Development and Housing Act.
These covered negotiated purchase, community-initiated purchase, land swapping, leveraged
land sharing plus, expropriation, the localized Community Mortgage Program, and joint
development with Gawad Kalinga and Habitat for Humanity.

Tenure Processes and Instruments

The program specifically caters to the housing needs of the poor, with a focus on providing
homelots, and not housing (Prilles 2004), which is consistent with the ‘enabling’ strategy
advocating self-help (self-build) among the poor. The tenure reform characterising
Kaantabay tends to combine the processes of regularization and formalization (Payne 1997),
which operates at the site and individual household level, respectively.
Regularization is a continuation of upgrading activities undertaken in urban poor sites
as early as 1989, thus conferring official recognition of these areas despite still being under
private ownership or negotiations for land acquisition by the City Government still underway.
The services ranged from the cementing of footpaths, repair and erection of streetlights and
power lines, to subdivision surveys and construction of water pumps and drainage facilities.
(Naga City Government 1995, 1997, 2000, 2005; First UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010; Urban
Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011; Naga City Government 2001, 2003, 2004)
Formalization, through the awarding of individual lot titles, tends to be the
program’s end-objective. It is the obligation of each individual household to pay the lot
amortization in full, the amount of which depends on the lot size occupied and agreed upon
terms on the paying period (usually 5-6 years), interest rate, and penalty charges (for late

31
 48
payment). (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011; First UPAO Chief-Naga City
2010; UPAO-Naga City 2008) It is only when the loan is fully paid would the member-
household be eligible to receive a title.

Political Relationships

The City Government and the Urban Poor

The City’s administration of Kaantabay as the flagship program for socialized housing
occurred alongside the growth of urban poor organizations joining the program, and further
institutionalization of pro-poor local urban development and governance policies.
Of 41 Kaantabay-assisted sites, 32 sites applied for the program starting 1994; in
particular, 18 onsite and 14 offsite (UPAO-Naga City 2010). Urban poor organizations took
advantage of direct assistance from the City for the ‘oportunidad na makasadiri ning daga’
(‘opportunity to own land’) particularly those with long-time land acquisition issues since the
1950s (e.g. Tabuco sites). Particularly in onsite settlements, the urban poor particularly took
to organizing among themselves, with the help of either COPE or the Urban Poor Affairs
Office, because it was a prerequisite before transacting with the City on land acquisition
issues. Nevertheless, in some sites (e.g., Igualdad), organizing was undertaken because it
was faddish – ‘uso ang pag-organize’.
After the re-election of Mayor Robredo in 1992, the urban poor movement continued
to engage in formal means of political engagement with the City through sector
representation provided by the Naga City Urban Poor Federation (Naga City Urban Poor
Federation Inc. 1986-2004; Angeles 1997). From 1994 to the present, the policy outputs
(Table 7) garnered by the Federation tend to be significant in sustaining their participation in
governance processes as a formally recognized sector. The urban poor earned accreditation
as a sector-member of the Naga City People’s Council created under the 1995 Empowerment
Ordinance. The access of the urban poor sector to City resources was institutionalized in the
1997 Kaantabay ordinance. On the balanced housing ordinance, the urban poor specifically

48
Based on interviews with UPAO and households in Kaantabay-assisted sites, amortization is still being
collected whether the beneficiaries reside in government or formerly private lands. While lot amortization for
those in private lands is based on land acquisition cost, for those in government properties like Cararayan, the
amortization is based on the development cost of the land. Even in one Kaantabay site in Barangay Sabang
which was declared a donation in official UPAO data, the beneficiaries are being made to pay amortization on a
purported PhP5000-housing ‘loan’ (A$=115, A$1=PhP43.45 as of Dec 2010) provided them by the City
Government before they transferred to the site in 1997 (UPAO Staff-Naga City 2011). Until now, the site leader
and his constituents still maintain that this PhP5000 is not as a loan but instead, a form of ‘assistance’ from the
former commercial landowner which was coursed through the City Government.

32
lobbied and won against an initial city council proposal that housing development by the
private sector could be undertaken outside of the city (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City
2010-2011; Naga City Housing Board 2010). 49 As such, the balanced housing policy of
Naga City could only be implemented within city boundaries.

Table 7
Policy Contributions of the Naga City Urban Poor Federation to Socialized Housing
and Local Governance, 1995-2002
Year Policies
Naga City Empowerment Ordinance (Ord. No. 95-092), which institutionalized
1995
the Naga City People’s Council
Kaantabay sa Kauswagan Ordinance of 1997 (Ord# 98-033), including 10%
1998
annual budget allocation for the program
Balanced housing component (20%), enforcing implementation within the City
2002
of Naga (supported by Federation Resolution)
Sources: Naga City Urban Poor Federation Inc. (1986-2004); Angeles (1997); Ateneo Social Science Research
Center (2003); Robredo (2006)

The direct participation of the City Government in Kaantabay; particularly, the face-
to-face meetings by urban poor organizations with Mayor Robredo and the Urban Poor
Affairs Office appears to have provided a venue for more informal and personalistic means of
political engagement (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011). In these
engagements, the urban poor are able to lobby matters of policy as well as material site-
specific needs.
Aside from the formal policy environment mediated by its alliances and collective
representation by the Naga City Urban Poor Federation, the urban poor movement tends to
maintain a direct although informal relationship with Mayor Robredo; particularly, through
its leaders. It is this informal access, characterized by group or personal visits to his office or
to his residence, that urban poor leaders are able to access budget allocation and approval for
basic services to their respective settlements, including delivery of materials such as cement
and water pipes (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011). Other than basic
services, this direct line to the Mayor has been utilized by some groups to request assistance
in negotiations with landowners (e.g., San Felipe, Liboton, and Concepcion Grande) and in
some cases, influencing important policies even when Mayor Robredo was not in power (e.g.,

49
Considering that all city council seats are occupied by Mayor Robredo’s party, it appears that not all city
councillors, just because they are identified with Mayor Robredo, are also ‘pro-poor’. However, in this author’s
attendance to barangay meetings prior to the May 2010 local elections, these councillors all tend to court the
‘urban poor’ vote.

33
10% annual budget for Kaantabay). 50 With the latter, the informal connections established to
the City Mayor tend to form part of the ‘groundwork’ tactics deployed by the urban poor on
its behalf.
The terms of City Government-urban poor movement engagements in Naga City, and
particularly in Kaantabay, in the name of tripartism, do change with respect to the state actors
in power and the relationships fostered with the urban poor. In the period of 1999-2001,
when Mayor Robredo tentatively left public office because of a constitutional prohibition to
his re-election, City Government-urban poor relationships appear to have stalled under the
administration of Mayor Sulpicio Roco, who faced fiscal problems partly inherited from the
Robredo administration and was not as receptive to the demands of the urban poor. 51
Kaantabay encountered a slowdown in land acquisition while Mayor Roco’s intentions to
help the urban poor shifted to livelihood program development. 52 In 2000, Mayor Roco even
formed the Task Force on Illegal Construction and Squatting, responsible for the removal of
‘nuisance’ structures in residential areas such sidewalk food stalls, fencing and even pigpens,
and authorized the demolition of so-called illegal housing in Kaantabay-assisted sites
(Tumbaga and Sabado 2003, 338-339; Naga City Government 2000).
Thus, continuing from 1989 to 1994 onwards, the strategies of the urban poor
movement point towards taking advantage of political opportunities offered by openings in
access, alliances and political alignments. In its relationship with the City Government, the
urban poor’s sense of ownership could be understood in terms of its collective insistence,
particularly in the early years, to reverse government apathy to the problem of basic services
and tenure, with the aid of strong NGO alliances. Progressive openings from 1989 to 1994
materialized to gain political influence, and from 1994 to the present, enhanced political
legitimacy through the Naga City Urban Poor Federation and the Naga City People’s
Council. The urban poor movement manoeuvred within formal and informal arenas to garner
policy reforms on tenure and governance as well as material gains that would fashion the

50
An urban poor leader mentioned that the 10% budget allocation for the urban poor in the 1997 Kaantabay
ordinance was originally opposed by Mayor Sulpicio Roco who served from 1999 to 2001, when Mayor
Robredo was prohibited by law from running for re-election. Mr. Roco was personally endorsed by Mayor
Robredo and was standard-bearer of his Aksyon Demokratiko party in the 1998 local elections (Kawanaka
2002, 48-52). Successive visits to the house of the then ex-Mayor Robredo were reported to have been made to
request for his help in convincing Mayor Roco to approve the provision.
51
The fiscal problems inherited by Mayor Roco from the previous administration involved commitments
tomade by Mayor Robredo to acquire through expropriation 14 properties for Kaantabay (Tumbaga and Sabado
2003, 338-339). The total acquisition cost for these 14 properties is estimated to have been PhP147million
(A$5.67million). Australian equivalent based on the December 1999 exchange rate of A$1=PhP25.96.
52
This livelihood program did not take off because, as it appears, the three years of his administration were not
enough to push the program from planning to implementation phase (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City
2010-2011).

34
Kaantabay program as pro-urban poor. The process has likewise embedded the urban poor
movement within the City’s participatory forms of politics, which in essence, renders
Kaantabay inseparable from its governance processes. However, the experience with Mayor
Roco (1999-2001) serves to highlight the quite personalistic political relationships of Naga
City’s urban poor with the City Government through Mayor Robredo, suggesting that their
effectiveness in negotiating policy and material needs depends on the prerogatives of those in
power. In particular, party affiliation does not necessarily guarantee a ‘pro-poor’ attitude
among state reformers in Naga City.

The City Government and the Elite

With respect to the Kaantabay program, the City Government appears to have acquired the
cooperation of private landowners (economic elites) through a mix of policy incentives and
institutional mechanisms, on the other hand.
Landowners were provided the opportunity for economic gains from otherwise
unproductive lands in the form of tax privileges provided for socialized housing sites
(Tumbaga and Sabado 2003), purchase offers made by the City Government under its
financing scheme, and arrangements for retention of land ownership through land swapping
or sharing, which Mayor Robredo refers to as ‘sweeteners’ (Robredo 2010).
Meanwhile, the institutionalization of the ‘tripartism’ strategy by the City
Government, which banked on participatory and conciliatory negotiation between landowners
and urban poor organizations, appears to have contained the threat of contentious backlash
from landowners. In the onsite settlements studied where land negotiations were held, the
issue does not appear to be the intransigence of landowners to negotiate but rather, the land
price and timing of payment which tends to reflect the openness of owners to release their
landholdings in the first place (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011; First UPAO
Chief-Naga City 2010).
In cases where landowner opposition existed, the remedies sought were still found in
existing policies as well as legal alternatives lobbied for by the urban poor movement.
Several sites reported landowner opposition (e.g., Concepcion Grande, Liboton, Sabang,
Tinago) which took recourse in private courts. However, landowner opposition appears to
have been quite disorganized and sporadic; and hence, has not become a stumbling block to
the increasing convergence of urban poor groups and the City on tenure issues (Urban Poor
Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011; Household Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011). In
particular, expropriation or the exercise of eminent domain, a cause lobbied for by the urban

35
poor movement as early as 1990 in the first term of Mayor Robredo, was already being
exercised by the City, although as a last recourse to land acquisition. (Naga City Government
1994, 1995, 1997, 1998a; Naga City Urban Poor Federation Inc. 1984-1990, 1986-2004;
Robredo 2010) Meanwhile, Robredo’s membership in a traditional political elite family,
combined with his personal connections with some private and institutional landowners, and
persuasive powers were known to be a plus in tenure negotiations (Urban Poor
Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011). Naga City’s elites, by their largely non-combative and
cooperative stance also have had a hand in the shaping of Kaantabay by their willingness to
negotiate under the tripartism strategy invoked in tenure negotiations.
Finally, the nature by which the City Government managed elite participation in
Kaantabay speaks more of the politics of ‘avoiding opposition than on mobilising societal
support’ (Moore and Putzel 1999, 28) 53 where the mix of personalistic appeal and policy
instruments were able to ‘sell’ the prospect of opening up private lands for socialized
housing. Nevertheless, while Kaantabay was shielded at the start from elitist-led politics; in
the long term, as has been shown, the backing of political elites, mainly Mayor Robredo,
would help sustain the influence of the urban poor movement on the program’s pro-urban
poor orientation. From 1994 onwards, political elites increasingly had a hand in the reform
process of Kaantabay.

Politicization of Kaantabay
I specifically argue that, with the combination of policy and political opportunity, Kaantabay
became a working ground for local state reformers, despite progressive inclinations, to
exercise electoral and distributive politics for political survival.
In Naga City, the progressive character of state reformers is argued to belie an
opportunistic tendency of building and sustaining political machines, which given the nature
of political constraints faced by its local government centrally involves the urban poor. This
argument is elaborated on the case of Mayor Robredo and his political machine in Naga City
as introduced in the previous section. I intend to explore an earlier observation that

53
Moore and Putzel (1999, 28) referred mainly to governments taking initiative in implementing poverty
reduction strategies not just out of political expediency. To find ways of quelling or managing opposition from
elite groups particularly for redistributive programs targeting the poor (land reform) one of two ways in which
governments act proactively to support poverty reduction. The other is in finding appropriate solutions to
immediate needs of the poor even those these are not outright political demands made by the poor themselves or
their allies in civil society.

36
Kaantabay tends to have been a key figure in building and sustaining the Mayor’s political
base among mass-based networks (Kawanaka 2002).
In the context of Kaantabay’s evolution, I initially examine the workings of Mayor
Robredo’s political machine in terms of: (1) the central importance of the urban poor in it;
and, (2) its incursion into Kaantabay implementation for political purposes.

The Workings of Mayor Robredo’s Political Machine

People’s Organizations and the Politics of Gratitude

The operation of Mayor Robredo’s political machine tends to involve manipulating the idea
of ‘people empowerment’ to political advantage: forming people’s organizations down to the
54
lowest level of the barangay to serve political ends. People’s organizations formed or
sponsored by the City Government tend to be distinguished by occupation, sector, or
community service. POs could be organized according to: (1) occupation usually among
informal service jobs such as pedicab driving and market vending (e.g., POs representing
padyak operators and drivers, and small-scale market operators); (2) sector groups like the
elderly and women (Senior Citizens, Lakas ng Kababaihan); and (3) community service, such
as BANKAT (short for Bantay Kataid which is akin to Australia’s ‘Neighbourhood Watch’)
and the barangay people’s organizations (BPOs). The political functions of these people’s
organizations tend to be evident during election periods in ‘direct’ activities such as vote
gathering, and coordination of campaign sorties and house-to-house visits at the village level.
They particularly undertake ‘underground’ activities such as what amounts to spying on the
conduct of grassroots leaders to complement the loyalty checks regularly conducted by
Mayor Robredo, and initiating re-election (usually six months before election time) to replace
disloyal leaders. (Kawanaka 2002)
Of these people’s organizations in Naga City, BPOs possess openly partisan leanings
as they are run by leaders appointed by the mayor, and are particularly activated during
election time to help ensure electoral victory to the City Government’s party (Kawanaka
2002, 75). Outside of election time, in recent years, they have come to assume governance
functions by virtue of their automatic membership in barangay-based people’s councils
(BPC) which are able to participate in formal sessions of the Barangay Development Council.

54
Kawanaka (2002) was arguing on behalf of a state-centred approach to the study of political power as
opposed to a society-centred approach. The author examined Mayor Robredo’s political machine to illustrate
the persistence of state power in the utilization and monopoly of resources for political control.

37
55
(Barangay Informants-Naga City 2010-2012) The term ‘BPO’ carries a double meaning,
in also standing for ‘Barangay Precinct Organization’, its original name way back in 1988
when it started out as a loose organization of poll watchers mobilized by Mayor Robredo on
his first mayoral campaign.
What is unique about Mayor Robredo’s political machine is not the rewarding of
56
massive amounts of money, but rather the implicit demand for ‘gratitude’ or what is
referred to locally as ‘utang na boot’, or the practice of politics by reciprocity (Timberman
1991; Barangay Informants-Naga City 2010-2012). In Filipino, ‘utang na boot’ corresponds
to ‘utang na loob’, which literally means ‘debt from the inside’ or in figurative terms,
intangible debt that can only be repaid by the receiver with an action deemed to be of worth
to the giver.
In the workings of Mayor Robredo’s political machine, ‘utang na boot’ tends to be
interpreted in the psyche of his mass following, quid-pro-quo for services rendered. Thus, in
the words of one source commenting on the extent of ‘utang na boot’ : ‘Ang suporta hali sa
nagiginibong serbisyo…personal…tultol na serbisyo (Support [from the people] is expected
from the services delivered… personal…proper service.) (Barangay Informants-Naga City
2010-2012) In earlier years, such sense of gratitude by the urban poor tended to be highly
capitalized as an unwavering source of political support, even considered strong enough to
counter money politics (Tumbaga and Sabado 2003). 57

Reinforcing Election and Non-Election Functions

The non-election functions of Mayor Robredo’s political machine tend to reinforce strongly
its election-related functions, in the process showing the robust integration of electoral and
redistributive politics.

55
BPOs tend to complement the Barangay Development Council (BDC), a formal structure whose members are
elected (Barangay Captain and Kagawads). The heads of BPOs, by virtue of being appointed by the City, serve
co-terminously with the administration in power. In Naga City, BPOs become part of the formal governance
structure as follows: all BPOs in a barangay are under an umbrella organization called the Barangay People’s
Council (BPC), the president of which is elected among the leaders of people’s organizations in the barangay.
The BPC President is an automatic member of the BDC. Together with two NGO representatives, the BPC
President participates in the BDC’s planning and budgeting exercises especially in the yearly allocation of the
economic development fund (EDF) per barangay.
56
This point is made because of the reported practice in Villafuerte’s camp of vote-buying, and on the other
hand, Mayor Robredo’s reputation as a tightwad (Barangay Informants-Naga City 2010-2012). In the previous
2010 mayoral elections, for instance, the mayor only allocated PhP250.00 per poll watcher (A$=5.75 based on
the Dec 2010 exchange rate of A$1=PhP43.45) as opposed to twice the amount given by the Villafuerte-funded
camp (PhP500.00=A$11.50).
57
In the words of a pro-Robredo supporter, ‘The urban poor is a loyal sector. They cannot be bought.’
(Tumbaga and Sabado 2003, 338)

38
 In terms of electoral politics, the political machine is expected during election periods
to provide the informal backbreaking ground and underground work to deliver votes for the
entire party represented by the City Government, in the course of this ensuring its continued
occupancy of city affairs. As an element of redistributive politics, the services provided to a
clientele base dominated by the urban poor 58 during non-election periods are facilitated not
only by core and grassroots-based organizations but also of allied government offices directly
under the City; namely, the City Hospital, City Social Welfare and Development, Metro
PESO, and most importantly, the Urban Poor Affairs Office. 59 (Kawanaka 2002)
Particularly in non-election periods, the redistributive politics characterising Mayor
Robredo’s political machine tends to be personalistic, direct and responsive especially to the
material needs of the urban poor; particularly in the form of indigent services, family welfare
services, livelihood loans, education, and housing. In this manner, the flagship program by
which Kaantabay is touted as a model for socialized housing attains strategic political
significance.
At the same time, as Kawanaka (2002) and this author observed, the election period is
all the more used by the urban poor to enhance their bargaining power for services from the
City. Through participant observation and casual interviews in the Naga City Hall during the
2010 local elections, the requests for assistance by the urban poor would range from free
medicines and hospital consultations (through doctor’s prescription forms bearing the
signature of city councillors) to free water and electricity connections (waived application
requirements) and solicitations for beauty contests. These special types of assistance,
particularly medical assistance and waived utility connection requirements, tend to be a form
of vote buying because the City Government rarely provides them during non-election
periods.
I contend here that Mayor Robredo’s political machine tends to be holistic in an ‘all
bases’-‘all sector’ barangay-based approach; targeting all strategic sectors of material
importance to Naga City’s lower classes at the barangay level. In recent times, the reach of
this political machine, based on the formation of dedicated BPOs, now covers the crucial
sectors of subsidized education cum social welfare (e.g., QUEEN and Sanggawadan
programs, where in the latter rice rations are provided to student scholars) where even
58
Although as Kawanaka (2002) illustrated, the City also delivered on issues of importance to the upper and
middle classes; namely, government efficiency, revenue generation, and anti-corruption.
59
Besides the urban poor, the political machine also works to serve the middle-class; for instance, in livelihood
loans and employment facilitation services provided by Metro PESO which are reportedly accessed also by the
lower-middle and middle classes. Very rare though are clients from the upper classes (Metro PESO-Naga City
2011).

39
barangay-level organizing has been undertaken (e.g., parents’ organizations for QUEEN-
subsidized students, Sanggawadan-assisted families, Bantay Familia). (Barangay Informants-
Naga City 2010-2012)
The political motivations of the City Government behind its social programs have not
escaped scrutiny (Bicol Mail Editor (Online) 2010), although the exercise of politics on its
empowerment programs, particularly the Kaantabay program, has been called by Mayor
Robredo’s camp as ‘clean politics’ (Jacob in Tumbaga and Sabado 2003) and ‘enlightened
self-interest’ (Prilles 2004). In the next discussion, the key roles played by Kaantabay in this
political machine are examined in order to cast light on the claims for good politics, and how
this may have worked in program implementation.

Kaantabay and Mayor Robredo’s Political Machine

Although Naga City’s Urban Poor Affairs Office is claimed to not directly engage in political
affairs unlike the Lingkod Barangay Office and its gamut of sectoral organizations
(Kawanaka 2002), I argue that it is nonetheless heavily politicised because of the political
purposes served by Kaantabay. In policy and implementation, Kaantabay is a land tenure
program of the City catering to the urban poor; however, as part of Mayor Robredo’s political
machine, Kaantabay tends to hold special significance in its practice of electoral and
distributive politics. Its significance is deemed to rest on the following aspects: (1) as a form
of capture of the mass housing sector, reflective of the sectoral targeting of Mayor Robredo’s
political machine; and, (2) the particular uses of Kaantabay-specific programs that points to
its vulnerability to political manipulation.

Capture of Socialized Housing

The Kaantabay program signifies the City government’s hold on the housing sector in Naga
City, particularly socialized housing; which tends to be consistent with the ‘all bases’-‘all
sector’ approach of Mayor Robredo’s political machine.
Nevertheless, with respect to the city’s segmented housing sector, it is estimated
based on local development and shelter plans (CPDO-Naga 2011, 2008) that socialized
housing accounts for about 25% of total occupied lots in Naga by 2010. 60 With low-cost
housing provided by only one real estate developer since 2010 (CPDO-Naga City 2010;

60
The estimate of 25% extrapolates from available data on awarded Kaantabay lots (9012 lots) in 2008 as well
as the total number of subdivisions in Naga in 2010 (77 subdivisions ) and average number of lots per
subdivision (334 lots).

40
DECA Homes-Naga City 2010), the only available housing provider accessible to the poor,
61
particularly in terms of affordability and availability of lots, remains to be Kaantabay.
Political Agenda in Direct Administration
The City Government’s administration of the program, on one hand, has been tailored to suit
its political agenda; namely, the direct involvement of the Office of the City Mayor, and the
Urban Poor Affairs Office in urban poor organizing. The Urban Poor Affairs Office, from
the start of the program until June 2011, has rarely functioned as an independent office but is
directly under the Office of the City Mayor. In the process of becoming City-managed, urban
poor organizing, which at the start had been the work of NGOs, has also been taken over in
large measure by the Urban Poor Affairs Office in recent years. Urban poor organizing,
which became a requirement in sites interested in availing the program, and since 1994
undertaken principally by the Urban Poor Affairs Office, is noted to have lacked the process
of educating about rights and obligations as compared to the early strategy adopted by NGOs
(COPE-Naga City 2010b).
At the same time, the organizational set-up that makes the Office of the City Mayor
directly responsible for overall administration (UPAO-Naga City n. d.), with the Urban Poor
Affairs Office in charge of planning and implementation, tends to be a politically charged
issue. This is especially in the extent to which the City Mayor can exercise discretionary
power over the awarding of lots as well as the prerogative of overturning or overruling policy
and decisions made by the Naga City Housing Board, its policy-making body. (Household
Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011; Naga
City Housing Board 2010)
Although subtly, urban poor organizations in each Kaantabay-assisted site could
facilitate the organization of political support by serving as ‘bases’ in which the urban poor
could be directly accessed (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011; Barangay
Informants-Naga City 2010-2012). 62 This particularly occurs during election periods when
urban poor organizations become the conduits or coordinating forces behind the conduct and/

61
DECA Homes, which is a low cost housing provider, could be availed but only with self or government
financing; namely, PAG-IBIG. As such, its housing program could be accessed only by those with regular
incomes, a requisite for membership in PAG-IBIG. Other than affordability, another consideration would be
ready availability. Housing units from DECA Homes are not immediately available upon application, with a
waiting period of at least one year.
62
As one urban poor leader mentioned, the increase in the number of urban poor organizations from 4 in 1989 to
about 64 in 2010 is a key feature of the political strategy of the City Government of formally building grassroots
support.

41
or dissemination of Kaantabay-specific programs such as lot awarding, condonation, and
Bayadnihan (work-for-pay scheme).
Kaantabay operates quite differently from the rest of Mayor Robredo’s political
machine but still fits in well with the agenda of creating, diversifying and sustaining political
networks among its urban poor, as the means in which the political machine could perpetuate
itself. The Urban Poor Affairs Office tends to be the parallel of the Lingkod Barangay Office
with a similar set-up with the urban poor organizations established in each Kaantabay-
assisted site. Compared, however, to the set-up of the Lingkod Barangay Office, these urban
poor organizations tend to differ significantly in several respects (Urban Poor Organizations-
Naga City 2010-2011). The first, regarding organization and cohesiveness, urban poor
organizations are now more loosely organized and no longer as active as they were at the
start-up phase or upon joining Kaantabay. Second, in terms of facilitating access to state
resources, the Urban Poor Affairs Office, as the implementing arm of Kaantabay, rarely
provides proactive assistance to urban poor organizations; unlike, for instance, in the
channelling of funding support from the City by the Lingkod Barangay Office to sector
organizations under its wing (Kawanaka 2002). The second feature could be explained
partly by the absence of a direct and functional role of urban poor organizations over its
members on critical matters such as repayment and the policing of illegal land transactions in
Kaantabay-assisted sites. Urban poor organizations in the set-up of Kaantabay’s
implementation at present tend to play a largely figurative and ceremonial role (e.g.,
convening annual assemblies for electing officers).
In these aspects, urban poor organizations under the Urban Poor Affairs Office
appear to be not as functional politically as the sector organizations of the Lingkod Barangay
Office. However, these urban poor organizations remain part of the City’s political networks
at the barangay-level, the leadership and membership of which criss-cross with that of sector
organizations. As similarly observed by Kawanaka (2002), several leaders and members of
urban poor organizations encountered in the study sites either work for the City or are active
in the affairs of their respective organizations in the barangay with support from the City
Government (Household Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011; Urban Poor Organizations-
Naga City 2010-2011). 63

63
Some of these urban poor leaders are City Hall employees and/ or are active politically as officers of quasi-
formal entities (BPOs) (e.g., Lupon, senior citizens association, market vendors association, Lakas ng
Kababaihan, QUEEN parents association) or are incumbent or ex-officials of the Barangay Development
Council, which are elected positions.

42
 Based on its institutional set-up and the entrenching of urban poor organizations
within the City’s grassroots networks, Kaantabay’s political significance tends to operate in
the process of embedding the urban poor into partisanship with the City, specifically with
Mayor Robredo’s camp. The politics of gratitude, effectively harnessed in general by the
political machine in return for the material benefits delivered to the urban poor, particularly
works for Kaantabay because of the central importance of land for housing. In the words of
an urban poor leader, ‘Sa urban poor, ginagamit ang ‘utang na boot’ ta isay man baya ang
dai mapasalamat na natawan ka ning dagang matutugdukan’ (Among the urban poor, the
sense of gratitude is indeed manipulated because who will not be thankful for being given
land). Such debt is owed particularly to Mayor Robredo: ‘Sinasalingoy kan mga tao saiya ta
dakulang tabang naitao digdi.’ (People always look back on him [Mayor Robredo] because
of the huge service done here). (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011) The
tendency towards partisanship is also observed within the Naga City Urban Poor Federation
that is politically identified with the Office of the City Mayor, although its leaders are quick
to qualify that this is because of the long-time working partnership with the City on pro-poor
reforms.
Specific to Kaantabay’s programs; namely, lot awards, condonation, Bayadnihan, and
legalization, the timing tends to be strategic, especially of the first three, so as to not invite
speculation of their use for electioneering, although ‘non-political’ justifications (i.e.,
humanitarian purposes) are conflated with political purposes to dilute or muddle the original
intent of these programs. Lot awards have become the norm for formalizing the inclusion of
beneficiaries in the program, whether in onsite and offsite settlements (Urban Poor
Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011). Meanwhile, condonation and Bayadnihan were
originally devised to serve humanitarian purposes such as providing emergency assistance to
beneficiaries affected by typhoons, and those facing severe economic hardships (Lim and
Asisten 2004; COPE-Naga City 2010a). The City’s legalization program came about in 2003
and 2004, to provide mechanisms for illegal occupants in Kaantabay-assisted sites to legalize
their stay. However, the frequency of use especially during election periods of the first three,
and the current impasse in implementing the fourth, appears to have contributed to the
negative aspects of the institutionalization of these programs.

Lot Awards. The manner in which lot awards become enmeshed in politics tends to be in the
timing in which they are given as well as in current extra-legal practices signifying the
influence of political bias in their awarding.

43
 The approvals for lot awards appear to increase significantly before or during an
election year although this has been claimed to be incidental. In every 3-year term served by
the City Mayor, the first year would deal mainly with land acquisition while the remaining
two years would involve lot approvals and awarding. (Second UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010)
Based on UPAO accomplishment reports, the following table shows the trend in lot awarding
under Kaantabay (Table 8).

Table 8
Lot Awards by UPAO, 2000-2008
Year Number of Lot Awards Election Year*
2000 64
2001 222 √
2002 21 √
2003 137
2004 73 √
2005 21
2006 No data
2007 330 √
2008 112
Source: UPAO Accomplishment Reports 2000-2008 (totals read to author by Second UPAO Chief)
*National and local elections: 2001, 2004 & 2007; Barangay elections: 2002 & 2007

However, in some sites, even without the numbers as evidence, lot awarding seems to
acquire political colour because of the timing during elections (e.g., urban poor sites in
Almeda and Queborac) as well as the gracing of title-awarding events by national-level
politicians although the beneficiaries consider these titles worthless. (COPE-Naga City
2010b; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-2011) For example, at the Sabang site in
this study, ‘titles’ handed out to several awardees by the incumbent Vice-President of the
Philippines in 2009 were mere photocopies of a mother title carrying the name of the City
Government.
Meanwhile, extra-legal practices in lot awarding suggest the intrusion of politics in
the formalization process of land tenure. In general, lot awards tend to signify the formalized
inclusion of applicant-sites and households in Kaantabay thereby being granted the position
as program beneficiaries or ‘original’ awardees who could avail the opportunity of owning
land. Lot awards are far from legal proofs of ownership but do provide means of access,
inclusion and membership to a site. It is expected therefore that in a Kaantabay-assisted site,
following the process of lot awarding, program beneficiaries would comprise only of original
awardees. However, among the findings of this study is the intrusion of non-original

44
awardees, through extra-legal means or outside the official procedures of the Urban Poor
Affairs Office. One of the extra-legal means of entry appears to be political influence of the
Office of the City Mayor, which as mentioned earlier, exercises overriding power on the
Urban Poor Affairs Office and the very policies of Kaantabay.

Condonation. The offer of condonation programs that grant amnesty to beneficiary

households who are behind on their amortization payments also tends to coincide with
election periods although in recent years other factors have contributed to their enactment;
namely, the typhoon scourge in Naga in 2007 and the problem with collection efficiency by
2009.
Since 2000, the City has undertaken five condonation programs (Table 9). In the first
year (2000), the coverage period was extended until 2001, an election year. 2001 was the
comeback year for Mayor Robredo, who after being prevented by law from running for re-
election from 1999 to 2001, was eyeing the mayoral post for the fourth time. 64 The fourth
condonation was in 2007, also an election year where Mayor Robredo was re-elected (serving
his 5th term as Mayor) while the fifth, in 2009, was less than 12 months before the May 2010
elections. The 2007 condonation, however, is said to have been justified after the effects
suffered by beneficiaries from two strong typhoons in Naga City (Milenyo and Reming),
while the 2009 condonation came as a measure to recover the program’s collection efficiency
(City Councilor-Naga City 2010). On the latter, the timing with the elections is also arguably
incidental, considering that the ordinance has already been drawn up as early as 2008 but
passed only in 2009 after the series of committee hearings and consultations conducted on it.

Table 9
Condonation Programs of Kaantabay, 2000-2009
Ordinance
Year Date Enacted Coverage Period Election Year*
No.
2000 2000-086 13 Dec 2000 Until 30 Nov 2000 65
2001 2001-054 08 Aug 2001 Until 08 Nov 2001 √
2002 2002-044 03 July 2002 Until 31 Dec 2002 √
2007 2007-010 16 April 2007 Until 30 June 2007 √

64
Mayor Robredo served three consecutive 3-year terms since 1988 (1988-1991, 1992-1994 and 1995-1998)
and was forbidden by law to run again in the 1998 elections. After a lull of three years where the mayoralty was
assumed by Mr. Sulpicio Roco, a party mate, Mayor Robredo vied for the post again in the 2001 elections and
won. He served for another three consecutive terms (2001-2004, 2004-2007, 2007-2010) before ceding the
position to another party mate to become now the Secretary of the Department of Interior and Local
Government under the Aquino administration
65
The dates are as written in the ordinance. Thus, the coverage date is considered retroactive to the
enactment date.

45
 Ordinance
Year Date Enacted Coverage Period Election Year*
No.
2009 2009-048 03 July 2009
2010 Jan 2010-Jan 2012 √
Sources: Sangguniang Panlungsod-Naga City (2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2009)
*National and local elections: 2001, 2004, 2007 & 2010; Barangay elections: 2002, 2007 & 2010

Its role in electioneering aside, the political intent of the condonation programs could
be apparent in the manner in which these have been successively implemented, despite the
lack of systematic monitoring or evaluative mechanisms to gauge their effectiveness. With
the exception of the 2009 condonation which is still ongoing, the Urban Poor Affairs Office
confirmed the absence of any review for the 2000-2002 as well as 2007 condonation
programs (Second UPAO Chief-Naga City 2010). In these years, no records of availing
beneficiaries were made to facilitate monitoring or evaluation that would have justified
whether it has been effective or not to merit continuation in succeeding years. Meanwhile,
one factor that counters the interpretation of condonation as political instruments was the lack
of information dissemination for those programs conducted in 2000 to 2007. Otherwise,
massive information campaigns would have been expected. However, in the majority of
Kaantabay-assisted sites studied, leaders and members alike, only a few were aware of the
2000 to 2007 condonation programs while majority have been informed of the 2009
condonation because of the information campaigns conducted by barangay by the Urban Poor
Affairs Office.
The City Government’s decision to implement condonation programs has not been
without opposition from the City Council. Condonation, while on the positive side regarded
as a humanitarian measure to ease the financial obligations of beneficiaries; on the negative
side, is seen as tending to corrupt the mentality of the poor by encouraging them to be remiss
on payments and just wait for the condonation periods to settle their obligations (Naga City
Government Personnel 2010-2011). The latter tendency has been observed in the study sites
where unpaid households prefer to postpone payments until the next condonation period
because of the savings generated from not paying the penalties for late payments (Household
Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011). Likewise, it is a common view shared among
beneficiaries that political motives underlie the City’s condonation programs, including the
2009 program, because of the election climate under which these programs have been
pushed.
The mix of justifications provided, election-related or humanitarian, including the
inconsistencies between the lack of evaluation and information dissemination, would suggest

46
that while there is a pattern related to election periods, condonation programs are not relied
on as primary means for electioneering. One possible reason for inconsistency could be the
financial costs to the City Government in the waiving of penalties for late payments.
Likewise, condonation programs exist within a multitude of means utilized by the City’s
political machine to merit substantial significance.

Bayadnihan. 66 The work-for-pay scheme started in November 2001 under Ordinance No.
2001-078 originally meant to address the dearth of livelihood and employment opportunities
among program beneficiaries; although because of limited budget, Bayadnihan appears to
have become more of a tool to exploit the cheap labour of the urban poor, in both election
and non-election periods.
While commendable by design in intending to provide work to beneficiaries in
exchange for wages that revert as lot amortization payments (Prilles 2004), Bayadnihan tends
to be constrained in impact because of budget limitations. With an annual disposable budget
of only PhP240,000 (A$5523) 67 and at a daily wage per worker of PhP220/day (A$5.06/day),
Bayadnihan is only able to fund about 1090 work-days every year (UPAO Staff-Naga City
2010). However, based on available records, in the five years that Bayadnihan has been
conducted (2002, 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2010), the budget has not been exhausted except for
2002, its first year of implementation when the scheme was undertaken mostly in Barangay
Tabuco, where Mayor’s Robredo incidentally lives (Table 10). 68 By the number of sites
assisted in a year, there appears to be no systematic means of targeting all sites. With the
exception of two onsite settlements that include again the Tabuco site, the majority of
participating sites tend to be offsite resettlements. 69 This would be consistent with the nature
of work conducted for Bayadnihan during election and non-election periods, which covers
clearing activities in resettlement sites as well as cleaning work in public places (e.g., Naga
City public market) and minor assistance in public works (e.g., construction of stone
monuments for the Peñafrancia festivities in September).
Table 10
Bayadnihan Program of Kaantabay, 2001-2010

66
The name combines the Filipino words, bayad (payment) and bayanihan (cooperativism).
67
This is based on the Dec 2010 exchange rate of A$1.00=PhP43.45
68
The 2010 report for Bayadnihan is incomplete because payment records since March 2010 have yet to be
consolidated according to the UPAO staff in charge.
69
These are offsite settlements in Balatas, Calauag, Concepcion Grande, Del Rosario, Pacol, and Sabang.

47
 Number of Workdays/ Total
Range of Months Election
Year Participating Worker Payment
workdays Worked Year*
Sites (median) (PhP)
2001 0 √
2002 3 1-31 10 Feb-Nov 331,900.00 √
2003 0
2004 0 √
2005 5 0.5-10 2 Apr-June 75,600.00
2006 0
2007 0 √
2008 1 No data - Sept 12,500.00
2009 10 0.5-7.5 1 Aug-Nov 42,020.00
2009-2010** 1 0.5-3.5 2 Dec-Feb 19,030.00 √
Source: UPAO-Naga City (2010c, 2002, 2005, 2008)
*National and local elections: 2001, 2004, 2007 & 2010; Barangay elections: 2002, 2007 & 2010
** Data contained consolidated figures from Dec 2009 to Feb 2010

While available records do not obviously support the view of Bayadnihan as an

electioneering tool, direct interviews in participating sites suggest that it is; particularly, on
the promises made to be able to mobilize a labour pool from urban poor sites during election
time. In the Tabuco site, for instance, before the May 2010 elections, work gangs were
mobilized (grouped according to male and female beneficiaries) on the promise of being
provided two to three months work for them to be able to repay their arrears in full
(Household Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011; Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City 2010-
2011). However, a few days after the elections, the promise was taken back citing the lack of
funds. Even barangay officials share the same sentiment, describing the Bayadnihan as
‘ginagamit sana pag may eleksyon’ (used only when there is an election).
Thus, although the wage rate for Bayadnihan falls within the range of minimum wage
rates for the Bicol Region in 2010, 70 the claim of labour exploitation tends to be on the ‘as-
needed’ basis in which the scheme is harnessed to avail of cheap unskilled services from the
urban poor. On the one hand, the scheme does not apply systematic targeting or coverage,
which could provide the means for other sites to participate. The Bayadnihan scheme, much
like the condonation programs for 2000-2009, is unknown in some study sites (Household
Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011). The households interviewed claim no knowledge of
‘Bayadnihan’ or in some cases, are aware that it exists but do not know how to avail of it.
The official data from UPAO provides supporting evidence of this low-key nature. Of the 41

70
In November 2010, the range of minimum wage rates for non-agricultural occupations in Bicol were
PhP212.00-247.00 (A$4.87-5.68 using Dec 2010 exchange rate of A$1=PhP43.45)(National Wages and
Productivity Commission-Philippines 2010).

48
Kaantabay-assisted sites in 2011, only 14 have availed of Bayadnihan from 2002 to 2010. Of
these 14, only five sites participated more than once. 71
On the other hand, its irregularity does not present itself as a reliable and secure
mechanism by which urban poor beneficiaries could fulfil their payment obligations to
Kaantabay. The foregoing table shows that participating beneficiaries in Bayadnihan could
work by as much as 2 days only per engagement. The exception was in 2002, its launching
year, when the program offered longer workdays but which were not sustained in succeeding
years. 72 The Urban Poor Affairs Office does not maintain a record of Bayadnihan workers
who were able to repay their arrears in full because of the scheme (UPAO Staff-Naga City
2010). Interviews with participating beneficiaries though suggest that by the limited number
of workdays served, the wages earned are largely gobbled up by interest and penalties
incurred later on from late or non-payments. (Household Respondents-Naga City 2010-
2011) The Bayadnihan wage rate of PhP220/day could help ease the financial burden if
availed of more regularly and consistently by beneficiaries 73 although as mentioned earlier,
the limited annual budget of only PhP240000 (A$6000) is a significant constraint to
expanding access to a larger number of beneficiaries.

Legalization. The program of legalizing illegal occupants in Kaantabay-assisted sites was

operationalized through Ordinance No. 2003-049 (enacted April 2003) and Amendment
Ordinance No. 2004-102 (enacted October 2004). (Sangguniang Panlungsod-Naga City 2003,
2004) By the titling and ordering of its provisions, the 2003 ordinance meant to set out graver
penalties on the illegal transfer of lots in Kaantabay-assisted sites thus providing an
amendment of Sec. 22 (Conveyances and Encumbrances) of the 1997 Kaantabay ordinance.
In the amended provision cited as “Sec. 22-C”, an additional ruling was made on the
legalization of ‘transferrors’ (the term used for illegal occupants) by application and payment
of fines and other financial obligations, foremost being payment of acquired property at a re-
valued rate based on fair market price plus a 50% premium. The 2004 ordinance served to

71
There appears to be no political pattern in the participation of sites except for the more regular participation of
those in Barangay Tabuco, which as already mentioned, is where Mayor Robredo resides.
72
In November 2010, interviews in the Tabuco site revealed long workdays for beneficiaries at 5-34 days. At
about the same time, the complete 2010 Bayadnihan data from UPAO was not yet ready because according to
staff concerned, daily work sheets were still being consolidated.
73
To illustrate, cited here is the record of one household in the Tabuco site who has availed of Bayadnihan more
than once from 2002-2010. With an outstanding loan from the city of PhP14,085.43 (for a 32-sqm lot priced at
PhP500/sqm deducted of the equity and Bayadnihan service payments), the household is incurring interest at
PhP160.91/mo (interest set at 9% per annum) and penalties reaching PhP158.91. Total arrears per month are
about PhP319.82. This would mean that two days work in Bayadnihan (PhP220/day) would be enough to cover
a month’s total of arrears to Kaantabay.

49
extend the period of application for legalization from October 2004 to October 2005 (one
year upon ordinance effectivity).
The results of the legalization appear to be confounded by the unreliability of black
and white data on the status of application, the ‘messy’ results on the ground, and the impasse
in implementation. The 2008 data entitled Appraised Value of Homelots for Legalization
(UPAO-Naga City 2008) contains the names of 43 applicants from four barangays, which
according to the Urban Poor Affairs Office is the official list of applicants for legalization. A
review of the list by members of the Naga City Housing Board suggest otherwise, with some
indicating the ineligibility of some applicants on the list. 74 Thus, it was suggested that this
2008 data from UPAO is only a shortlist although the office maintains it is official data.
Fieldwork conducted in 2010 and 2011 indicate the pervasive phenomena of illegal
transfers in Kaantabay-assisted sites especially in offsite settlements like those in Abella,
Calauag, Pacol, and San Felipe. On the ground, these transfers are called the buying and
selling of ‘rights’ although they also come in the form of non-cash transactions (e.g., form of
debt payment, lot swap between relatives). The illegal occupants interviewed cut through all
levels of the socioeconomic spectrum, but consisting of those who have, and have not applied
for legalization suggesting how illegal transfer may have increased further after the 2003
ordinance was passed. This is so because the ordinance was considered an available option to
legitimize occupation although those interviewed were not aware of its effectivity clause
(until October 2005 only). The group of ‘non-applicants’ likewise suggest how illegal
transfers have been facilitated by the Naga City Government either through the exercise of
discretionary power or by extra-legal means that circumvents the application process imposed
by the Urban Poor Affairs Office. 75 Meanwhile, those who have applied face a ‘waiting
game’ as regards the decision of the Naga City Government on their application. Some
complain of the ‘non-transparency’ of the law and inaffordability of prescribed financial
obligations. Some households were not made aware of the financial clause requiring them to
pay current market value on the property and 50% premium. Others who are willing to pay,
on the one hand, bemoan the high cost of legitimation as delays in government decision-

74
Apparently, there are some applicants who are not eligible because of their upper-class background. (Naga
City Housing Board 2010)
75
In one non-applicant household, the lot bought from a certain site was placed under the name of one
household member who is already over 18 years old. The household member’s name is then placed in the
waiting list of urban poor applicants in UPAO, and then ‘selected’ as the beneficiary for the said lot.

50
making run parallel with the increasing rise of land values in Naga City. 76 (Household
Respondents-Naga City 2010-2011)
As a feature of Kaantabay’s politicization, the legalization program has been
considered appears to be a critical point of weakness that has further opened complications in
program administration. Legitimizing the ‘illegal’, in the case of Kaantabay, involves
confronting illegal transfers done in the interim period from 1994 to 1997 when there was no
Kaantabay ordinance, the period from 1997 to 2005 (end of effectivity of the 2004
legalization ordinance) and from 2005 to the present time (no governing ordinance as such
illegal transfers could not be applied for legalization). It is even unclear where the powers of
decision-making and enforcement lie, particularly as confusion permeates who gets to decide
whom among the Urban Poor Affairs Office, the Naga City Housing Board, or the Office of
the City Mayor on legalization issues. Decision-making tends to be complicated, for
instance, by changes in the chairpersonship of the Naga City Housing Board, which are
assumed by an elected city councillor, in election and non-election periods. Even though
under Mayor Robredo’s party, Housing Board chairpersons appear to have particular rather
than consistent approaches to the legalization issue as to account for the lack of significant
progress. 77
The foregoing discussion indicates that Kaantabay-specific programs make particular
contributions to the electoral and redistributive politics of Mayor Robredo’s political
machine, although with respect to its entirety, there tends to be restraint in the deliberate and
full-blown use of Kaantabay because of intervening financial and budgetary considerations,
including efforts to appear to maintain Naga City’s ‘clean government’ image. It is quite
interesting that in the political issues underlying the practice of lot awards, condonation
programs, Bayadnihan, and legalization, the Naga City Urban Poor Federation remains on the
sidelines despite figuring heavily in the recognition of the urban poor movement, and the
shaping of Kaantabay policy. This condition could be attributed to the structural forces
governing Kaantabay, which as discussed in this section, tends to be dominated heavily by
the direct hand of the City Government in implementation. State reformers, in this case, do
not act as idealists on a straight line, so to speak, because of opportunistic interests that tend
to undermine the practice of good politics.
76
In an interview with UPAO staff on June 2010, it was reported that UPAO has yet to provide official approval
of legalization to applicants.
77
The First UPAO Chief who happened to be the Housing Board Chairperson in June 2010 did not act on
legalization issues, preferring to concentrate on policy matters affecting the urban poor (First UPAO Chief-Naga
City 2010). By March 2011, the new Housing Board Chairperson opted to hear first the recommendations of
the newly elected mayor on legalization (Naga City Housing Board Chairman 2011).

51
CONCLUSION: RETHINKING THE PARAGON OF ‘GOOD
GOVERNANCE’ AND ‘ENABLING’

The Politics of Reform Implementation

Against the interactive state-society framework of Fox (1993, 1994, 2007), I now address the
question: how do reform dynamics in Naga City using the Kaantabay program as an
illustrative case compare? In the analysis of state-society relationships uniquely playing out
over three implementation periods, I provide two tentative hypotheses on the nature of reform
dynamics in Kaantabay, and its consequences to program effectiveness. The first deals with
changing configurations in the balance of personalistic and party power within the Naga City
Government, which is moving towards increasing personalism in the exercise of power
alongside the party-based (collective) and calculated use of it for political survival. The
second is the ironical reversals in the strength and autonomy of societal forces, i.e., Naga
City’s urban poor as organizations and as a movement. The consequences reverberate in the
compromised state of repayment performance and the control of illegal land transactions in
Kaantabay.

Personalism, Party Politics, and Political Survival

The exercise of state power by the Naga City Government in the lead-up to its self-
administration of the Kaantabay program occurred, not in the form of ‘good governance’ with
Mayor Robredo the established architect and champion, but in the birth of his political
machine founded on barangay- and sector-based people’s organizations. Throughout
Kaantabay’s implementation, this accounts for the rise of Mayor Robredo’s personalistic
power among the urban poor which, to emphasize, tends to be identifiably separate from his
party. As such, while Mayor Robredo may decide and act in a ‘pro-poor’ manner, this ‘pro-
poor’ attitude is not essentially a party commitment. Evidence to this is the lukewarm
reception of Mayor Roco, a party mate, to urban poor concerns from 1999 to 2001, including
the tendency of some city councillors also allied with Mayor Robredo’s party to propose laws

52
and regulations not in favour with the urban poor (e.g., balanced housing development
outside of Naga City). 78
However, while divisions exist within the party in actualizing the ‘pro-urban poor’
commitment; on the other hand, the party solidifies in courting the ‘urban poor vote’ by the
way it relies on Mayor Robredo’s campaign machinery during election and non-election
periods. 79 By the same vein, as Kawanaka (2002) adequately pointed out, for the
predominantly middle-class council members belonging to and running for re-election under
Mayor Robredo’s party, his personalism and political machine are indispensable political
resources during election time. Thus, a split phenomenon tends to underlie the attitude of
state reformers in Naga City with regard the urban poor, depending on their individual and
collective ambitions; the period between non-elections and elections played out in balancing
political reputation and political survival.
For the urban poor, it is this personalism rendering Mayor Robredo the prominent,
frequently utilized, and often ‘last resort’ access route in its dealings with the state, outside of
the formal channels available. This personalism has been taken advantage by the urban poor
as organizations and as a movement, in negotiating both policy and material needs, in
retaining informal access to power and discretion, and in attaining formal voice and
representation in the city’s governance structures. It is this same personalism, however, that
underlies the observed apprehension of the urban poor on the continuity of Mayor Robredo’s
hold on power in Naga City vis-à-vis his party. To the urban poor, the 1997 Kaantabay
Ordinance would appear to be political insurance to the instability and ambivalence of Mayor
Robredo’s party to the ‘pro-urban poor’ ethic. 80

78
In the 2010 local elections, Mayor Robredo’s party again monopolized the win on all city council seats in
Naga City. However, one of the first initiatives of his anointed successor, Mayor John Bongat, was to eradicate
informal vendors in the Naga City Public Market on a program of ‘discipline’ and upgrading of its standards
close to the newly opened mall, Shoe Mart, along Panganiban Avenue (in what this author observes as the
‘mallization’ of the Naga City Public Market). As such, the program of the City to rename the Naga City Public
Market as the Naga City People’s Mall. This author conducted interviews with officers and affiliates of the
Naga Market Stallholders Federation (NAMASFED), and itinerant vendors on March 2011. (PPS President
General Luna-Naga City 2011; NAPMASFED President-Naga City 2011)The interviews suggest the adverse
effect of this eradication program not only the daily income earning capacities of informal vendors but also their
recovery capacity in light of confiscations made of wares and earnings that serve as ‘seed investments’ for the
next day of selling.
79
In the June 2010 local elections, this author observes that the same council members with reservations on
assisting the urban poor are active in courting the ‘urban poor vote’ in barangay campaign sorties and meetings.
80
The passage of the 1997 Kaantabay ordinance particularly coincided with the last term in office of Mayor
Robredo who, by serving three consecutive terms since 1988, is inevitably bound to step down in 1998. Thus,
in urban poor circles, the Kaantabay ordinance is believed to be political insurance, such that even after Mayor
Robredo’s departure, urban poor reforms would remain institutionalized (Urban Poor Organizations-Naga City
2010-2011; Naga City Housing Board 2010).

53
 The compromise for Kaantabay, however, lies in the integrity of its administration
given the manner in which personalism was harnessed consistently with the workings of the
political machine. The direct control exercised by the Office of the City Mayor on the Urban
Poor Affairs Office exemplifies this, considering the political value of socialized housing in
Naga City and the embeddedness of Kaantabay-assisted sites within the locus and networks
of barangays and sector organizations at the roots of the political machine. The politicization
of Kaantabay programs reveals the combination of personal discretionary power, exercised
outside of party politics, as well as collective power that aims towards party survival.
In its entirety, therefore, the practice of ‘good governance’ in Kaantabay is a form of
political management where in light of imperatives found in local and national contexts, the
implicit objective of political survival and continuity persists and even overrides explicit
program objectives. These imperatives lie not only in the local development opportunities
offered under decentralization but also in the need to preserve party power and hold at bay
the omnipresent traditional political opposition. While Fox (1993) considers legitimation and
accumulation as the strategies dividing state reformers in their loyalties to the state and to
forces of change, 81 the Naga City case as revealed here under the Kaantabay program, shows
political survival as a significant yet implicit factor to the support of reform projects,
although with adverse consequences. Meanwhile, this paper throws caution to the faith
bestowed on state reformers as agents of strategic and progressive change (Hughes and
Hutchison 2010). Given the experience of Kaantabay under Mayor Robredo and his party,
state reformers are not static in their intents and motivations, their responsiveness and
flexibility held captive by their political environments, and their ability to exploit their
position for political survival.

Reversals and Naga City’s Urban Poor

The political spaces occupied by Naga City’s urban poor, based on previous discussions on
political relationships, dwell within the realm of societal forces, in which they are an intrinsic
part, and those occupied by state reformers, highlighted by Mayor Robredo and his party, as
well as other state actors (the traditional opposition) whose interests intersect with theirs.
Reversals in the strength and capacity of the urban poor, as organizations and as a movement,
tend to be linked to the relationships fostered in these realms.

81
Fox (1993) considers the tension, faced by state actors, between private capital accumulation and legitimation,
or the preservation of social peace and resolution of state-society conflict using proper formal channels.

54
 During Kaantabay’s implementation, two distinct trends are apparent. State forces,
exemplified by the Naga City Government, move towards increased strength, in its direct
control of the program, with singular and overriding motivation for political survival, under
the combination of personalism and party power. Societal forces, taking the urban poor
experience, tend to be moving in the opposite direction- towards individualization and
organizational stasis, without authority in program implementation, and torn between
accountability and political capture.
The irony for societal forces is that its breakdown occurred alongside expanded forms
of formal participation in local politics, which points out the insidious manner in which
governance structures underlie the strategy of political management.
With the nature of the urban poor’s political participation in the post-1994 period,
societal incorporation, 82 in place via its representation in state-sponsored governance
structures such as Naga City Housing Board, does not appear to have transformed the urban
poor movement into a progressive political actor particularly in the sense of enforcing
policies contained 1997 Kaantabay ordinance which it strongly lobbied. Under this structure,
participation has been guaranteed but the capacities for contestation (e.g., against the exercise
of discretionary power) has been severely disabled by the terms of involvement (i.e., policy-
making and recommendatory role) as well as the political stranglehold under open
partisanship. Meanwhile, civil society expression, in the promotion and active formation of
urban poor organizations under the tripartism strategy, fizzled out under conditions of direct
program control by the City Government. By being structurally powerless against program
violations, exploited under political machines, and facing external and internal threats to
sustainability, urban poor organizations in Naga City appear to stand in a compromised
position between organizational and state goals, between autonomy and reliance on the state
for reform.

Assessing the Paragon on Its Own Terms

The political environment of Kaantabay played an important role in its evolution from a
tenure reform program shaped by urban development and governance policies. The
confluence of political opportunities in the rise of Naga City’s urban poor movement, the

82
In Jayasuriya and Rodan (2007), extra-state political participation have been categorized into individual and
collective forms. Societal incorporation and civil society expression are the collective forms. Societal
incorporation is state-sponsored while civil society expression tends to function independently outside state
control.

55
political passivity of the landed economic elite, and the idealism fostered by relatively
unprecedented City Government-urban poor partnerships enabled the emergence of an
innovative housing program with participatory and pro-poor attributes. However, in its
evolution, the terms of reform and ownership of Kaantabay has changed; in part, by what
appears to be its incorporation into Mayor Robredo’s political machine where opportunistic
tendencies hold sway and where the once strong ownership of the program by the urban poor
movement tends to mask political capture on the ground.
Based on the data presented in this paper, the Kaantabay of the present could only lay
partial claim to good governance and consequently, the potential of the ‘enabling’ strategy for
socialized housing in Naga City. Using the attributes of Mayor Robredo’s Good Governance
Model (Progressive Leadership, Functional Partnerships, and Broad-based Stakeholder/
Community Ownership), the initial findings suggest the following:
1. The compromise in vision-setting for Kaantabay between program administration and
political management, the latter pointing to the practice of ‘progressive leadership’ for
political survival. The use of populist tools supposedly to sustain political support of the
urban poor tended to be double-edged in compromising the integrity of Kaantabay policies
and laws, in the process undermining the sense of responsibility of beneficiaries (e.g.,
condonation programs).
2. The fracturing of ‘functional partnerships’ on two fronts: between the City
Government/Urban Poor Affairs Office and urban poor organizations; and, urban poor
organizations and member-households. Partnerships of urban poor organizations with the
City Government under the tripartism strategy of Kaantabay were not sustained in its
implementation. As discussed earlier, urban poor organizations in Kaantabay-assisted
sites only get to assume strategic roles in terms of policy and services upgrading as well as
putting into motion the political machinery of Mayor Robredo in their respective areas.
However, these partnerships do not translate into effective results when it comes to
program repayment and prevention of illegal lot transactions, for instance. The ‘market-
based’ nature of transactions in Kaantabay is believed to have fostered alienation between
urban poor organizations and their members. At present, the individualistic nature of
transactions between program beneficiaries and the Urban Poor Affairs Office tends to
have erased whatever power urban poor organizations could exercise over their members;
for instance, to enforce payment or prevent illegal selling of homelots.
3. The demeaning of ‘functional partnerships’ because of overlapping ‘controlling’ and
‘cooperative’ alliances with the urban poor. Institutional channels where sector

56
 partnerships could be made effective, such as the Naga City Housing Board, tend to be
limited in their enforcement powers by the discretionary power exercised by the Mayor.
The existence of broad-based urban poor organizations like the Naga City Urban Poor
Federation where urban poor organizations are allied, in actuality, hide the disconnect of
these organizations with their members under the individualistic transactions practiced in
Kaantabay.
4. Insufficiency of ‘ownership’ as a condition for good governance. In onsite and offsite
settlements studied, urban poor organizations acknowledge their ownership of Kaantabay
in terms of the collective success in which they were able to negotiate for and lay claim to
their homelots versus the landowners. However, this sense of ownership tends to be
incomplete as these organizations contend with the twin problems of tenure insecurity and
illegal occupancy. These urban poor organizations feel powerless to act against these
issues which they perceive as private/ individualized and therefore, ‘hands-off’ to the
organization. This is partly borne by how urban poor organizations have been eased out
under the market dynamics of Kaantabay. Powerlessness against illegal occupancy is
further heightened by their perception of going against the political monolith which is the
City for illegal lot transactions/ activities deemed to have been authorized by the Mayor
and the Urban Poor Affairs Office. Finally, the sense of ownership is diluted by the
perception of being ‘used’ for politics, particularly in Kaantabay sites where lot awards,
condonation, and Bayadnihan schemes are for demonstration or showcase purposes only.

57
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