Wednesday, June 10, 2009 [ manilatimes.net ]
THE Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Mayor Alredo Lim of Manila and the city council to answer questions on their approval of a city ordinance allowing the continued operations of the “Big Three” oil firms in the city’s Pandacan district.
Lim and the councilor respondents were given 10 days to submit their counter-affidavit to the consolidated petition, said the Court’s spokesman, lawyer Jose Midas Marquez.
The petitions were filed by former Manila mayor and now Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Lito Atienza, the political group Social Justice System (SJS) and by members of the Manila city council who opposed the controversial Manila City Ordinance 8187.
Marquez said that in yesterday’s en banc session, the magistrates also agreed to defer coming out with a decision on the consolidated petition asking the High Tribunal to declare Ordinance 8187 null and void, and prohibit respondents from enforcing the same.
“The Court does not see urgency of the need to issue TRO [temporary restraining order] in this case,” Marquez told reporters.
Ordinance 8187 was signed late last month by Lim. It amends Ordinance 8119, the Manila Comprehensive Land Use Plan and Zoning Ordinance of 2006, by creating a medium industrial zone and heavy industrial zone to include the Pandacan area.
Ordinance 8119 provides for the gradual phase out of the oil depot of Chevron Philippines Inc., Petron Corpo. and Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. located in the residential and commercial district of Pandacan. The ordinance was upheld with finality by the Supreme Court.
Petitioners argued that Lim and the majority members of the city council have no authority to enforce the said ordinance because it is illegal and unconstitutional and thus without force and effect.
Twenty out of 21 councilors present during the regular session of the City Council of Manila on June 9, 2009, approved Ordinance 8187. The lone dissenter was Councilor Ernie Rivera, who has consistently taken a stance against the continued stay of the oil depot in Pandacan and Santa Ana.
The petitioners claimed that the City of Manila “can only legislate to promote the general welfare and not to enact measures, like Ordinance No.8187, that constantly and perennially expose the inhabitants to serious physical danger.”
The Pandacan oil depot, they said, store millions of liters of flammable and volatile substances, including aviation fuel and “undoubtedly they are magnets for attacks by terrorists.”
“The conflagration triggered in the depot by a terrorist attack would result in deaths and destruction that would dwarf the New York September 11, Bali and Mumbai bombing,” the petitioners warned.
The group also questioned the motive of the city council in amending the said ordinance, which, it claimed, manifested only when the “Big Three” oil companies could no longer stave off their removal from the Pandacan depot.
--William B. Depasupil
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