So how will this controversy—or non-controversy, depending on how you look at it—play itself out?
A video that went viral last week showed Sen. Cynthia Villa raising her voice as she confronted a group of security guards and the president of the homeowners’ association of a subdivision in Las Piñas City where she resides.
The issue: the installation of steel barricades on a public road within the BF Resort Village (BFRV).
The lawmaker has since clarified she did nothing wrong.
Several subdivision residents also defended her after the verbal tussle with Euan Rex Toralballa, newly elected president of the BF Resort Village Homeowners Association, Inc. (BFRVHAI), who is said to have opposed several of her projects inside the village.
Villar and her legislative staff rushed to the site along Aventine Hills Street upon learning that Toralballa, accompanied by security guards, installed steel barriers on the road in front of her composting and vermicomposting project.
“I don’t understand why these officials of the BFRVHAI closed it off. That’s for the people,” said Villar, who has been a resident of BFRV since 1976.
BFRV is a gated subdivision in southern Metro Manila. It was a project of Banco Filipino (BF) before it was abruptly closed by the government in 1985.
Villar’s composting project in Las Piñas, inaugurated in 2017, processes kitchen and garden wastes into organic fertilizer. The composting facility helps the city attain zero waste management goals.
In the video, Villar insisted the barricade should be removed:
“Tanggalin niyo yan!” She was even heard in the video telling Toralballa, “pini-personal mo ako!”
“We are not doing anything bad,” she said in a television interview.
Prior to the April 17 incident on Aventine Hills Street, village resident Loida Rafal disclosed the Villar family had donated millions of pesos for the construction of the bridge which had been approved by barangay officials and the homeowners’ association.
However, for unknown reasons, Toralballa and the new directors in the homeowners’ association opposed the construction of the bridge. The bridge is supposed to connect Las Piñas and Bacoor in Cavite.
The lawmaker’s staff is also planning to plant trees this month in the open spaces around the composting and vermicomposting facility and to have the sidewalk paved with concrete.
However, Toralballa and his security guards padlocked the entrance gate going to the project, Rafal said.
Because of this, she said, trucks with ready-mix cement could not enter the BF Resort Village, resulting in delays in project completion.
Rafal said with Toralballa’s directive, Villar’s project managers could not even purchase construction materials from hardware stores inside the village since Toralballa and his men had threatened to close the hardware stores.
The viral video showed another village resident, Maribel Laguidao, saying Villar did not hurt the security guard but only ordered him to leave.
“As a matter of fact, Villar is fighting for the welfare of the people.”
That video clip, she said, showed that Toralballa was trying to provoke ugly reactions from the senator. “Pinipikon nila si Senator para magalit habang naka-video.”
The controversy started in July last year after the newly-installed village administration posted security guards at Onelia Jose St. who then moved to prevent Las Piñas resident-holders of the “Friendship” stickers from freely using the street that connects to the Zapote River Drive leading to Cavitex and the bridge that leads to Bacoor in Cavite.
Under the new traffic scheme, non-BFRV residents, even if they are Las Piñas residents and holders of “Friendship” stickers, will only be allowed entry and exit via Onelia Jose St. if they will buy the BFRV sticker worth P2,500 per vehicle.
The move by the new BFRVHAI administration is said to have created confusion among Las Piñas residents in other subdivisions and villages since they have been enjoying free access to the friendship route since 1995.
It was in 1995 when the city government of Las Piñas issued an ordinance directing developers and homeowners’ associations in the city to allow the public to use their streets free of charge as alternative routes (the so-called “Friendship Route”) to ease or decongest traffic along the Alabang-Zapote Road and other main streets in Las Piñas, and imposing penalties for violations.
So how will this controversy—or non-controversy, depending on how you look at it—play itself out?
(Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)