While I admire your guts, Bayani, to beautify Metro Manila by implementing strict control over sidewalks, undisciplined bus drivers, among others, still there's one part in you which is missing -- heart. You don't have a heart especially for the poor people like sidewalk vendors. Just awhile ago I saw in television how your men mercilessly confiscated the items being sold by the vendors around a certain public school along Commonwealth Avenue.  Of course, I don't blame your men for they just follow your instructions. What I just can't understand is how you don't care for these vendors. They are jobless and they need to survive amid the rising commodity prices brought about by the series of oil price hikes in the world market. Besides, today is holiday and there's not much motorists travelling along Commonwealth Avenue. Don't you know that a 150-peso income earned from sidewalk vending is more decent than what a corrupt politician earns? A 150-peso income per day no matter how low by economic standard is still a hard-earned money and can at least bring food to the table and feed a number of people. If you take that away from them, you are doing a great disservice to the nation. You are worst than the robbers.

In Thailand, sidewalk vending is being regulated but not totally eradicated. Most of the Thais are also poor just like us Filipinos, but their leaders have hearts. Their leaders allow sidewalk vending in a way that the vendors will neither block the sidewalk nor spillover on the national road. The jobless Thais especially the uneducated can survive in this world by selling on sidewalks. In a way, crime is lessened because everyone can earn a decent income. Why can't you just do the same thing? Giving the sidewalk vendors a sort of leniency while making sure that they are not blocking the road is a win-win solution.

We are not Singapore or Japan where there are no sidewalk vendors. We are totally different from them. They are rich, and we are poor. We cannot pretend to be rich by shooing away all the sidewalk vendors depriving them of a living and then look beautiful superficially. Yes, sidewalks are for the people, but the sidewalk vendors are also humans who deserve decent lives. Sidewalks are affordable locations for the poor instead of renting a space in a mall with very ridiculous rental fee per square meter.