JANUARY 22, 2001 VOL. 157 NO. 3

This Stinks!
Manila's garbage is piling up. And that's a whole lot of rubbish for Joseph Estrada—in all senses of the word
By ANTHONY SPAETH

John Stanmeyer for TIME. Trash piling up in Manila's Makati area is putting President Josephn Estrada under greater pressure.

Joseph Estrada undoubtedly knows his Bible—and these days he must feel like he's trapped in a remake of the Book of Job. "Son of a bitch!" the embattled Philippine President confided to one of his cabinet members last week. "It's true what they say: that bad luck comes in pairs." Or in greater multiples.

Estrada, of course, is on trial in the Senate on charges of corruption and violating the Philippine constitution, and the testimony so far has been as gentle as a plague of locusts. Last week, the former commissioner of the Philippines' Security and Exchange Commission alleged that the President had tried to block a probe of a company in which he owned shares. Meanwhile, Manila is still recovering from five unexplained bomb blasts that went off the day before New Year's Eve, killing 18 and injuring at least 80.

ALSO IN TIME COVER: The Future of Drugs Now that our DNA has been decoded, the search for better, faster and more effective medications begins in earnest • Inside the Brave New Pharmacy: At a leading genomics firm, the star of the show is a robot • DNA Microarrays: The workhorse of genomic medicine • Bioinformatics: How to design a molecule • The Search for Cures: The fight against aids, cancer, mental illness, obesity, Alzheimer's NORTH KOREA: Out of the Bag A German doctor's close encounters with the Hermetic Kingdom shed light on the miserable living conditions in one of the world's last Stalinist states. Plus, excerpts from his diary THAILAND: The New No. 1 The numbers are lining up for Prime Minister-elect Thaksin JAPAN: Murder on the Wards Fears that a killer nurse has been on the loose lead to calls for a more open medical system THE PHILIPPINES: A Load of Rubbish The streets of Manila are overflowing with uncollected trash HONG KONG: Surprise Farewell A top civil servant's resignation puzzles the territory MEDIA: A Guy on the Move Hong Kong mogul Jimmy Lai starts anew in Taipei RELIGION: Muslim Rebellion Japanese food-additive maker Ajinomoto comes under fire in Indonesia for an odd way of making MSG TRAVEL WATCH: Bear Necessities in Ancient, Spicy Chengdu

If that wasn't enough metaphorical filth in the driveway of MalacaNang, the presidential palace, Estrada is now enduring another trial: real garbage, of the stinking and unhygienic kind, just about everywhere. On Dec. 30, the capital's main dump site at San Mateo, Metro Manila, had to close. The site was virtually full, and an alternate dump wasn't ready yet. The result is a city almost buried in slimy, malodorous rubbish. "You can't help but puke all the time," complains Emmalyn Jayari, a 17-year-old student at Pasay East Elementary School. Worms and rats have become urban hazards, and Manuel Villar, former speaker of the House of Representatives, is worried about epidemics. "A public outbreak of cholera, typhoid or other fatal diseases may occur," he warns.

That's not just trash talk: Metro Manila's 14 million citizens produce 6,000 tons of garbage a day. The original plan was to close down San Mateo and transport garbage by sea to Semirara, a town on the central Philippine island of Panay. Two companies were given contracts to convert an abandoned coal mine into a dump, and the garbage was to be put on sealed, leak-proof barges for the picturesque, two-to three-day journey from Manila. (Semirara is close to Boracay Island, a pristine beach resort favored by international tourists.)

But public hearings on the plan were never held in Semirara, and locals mounted an effective protest against becoming the recipients of Manila's refuse. "We have been saying no to this evil plan from the beginning," seethes Gideon Javier, one of the leaders of the protest. "Read our lips, read our laws, read our legal suits: the answer is NO!" On Jan. 10, the broadsheet Manila Standard printed a photo of one of the garbage barges that confirmed all of Semirara residents' fears. It showed a ship filled to the brim with rubbish, unsealed and exposed to the elements, waiting for the go-ahead to unload its cargo.

Last week, with 11 days of garbage accumulated on Manila's streets, Estrada held an emergency meeting of his Economic Coordinating Council. He suspended the plan to use the Semirara dump and ordered the city's development authority to come up with another solution within 10 days. That won't be easy. A local environmental movement has arisen, and there is virtually no community on the country's main island of Luzon willing to take Manila's refuse. Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chairman Jejomar Binay announced that he had found a "secret" place where the garbage could be dumped. Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno says it may be the former site of Clark Air Force base, abandoned by the U.S. Air Force in 1990 and now under national jurisdiction.

Garbage, sad to say, has a special political relevance in the Philippines. In the latter years of the Ferdinand Marcos presidency, a burning garbage dump nicknamed Smokey Mountain became a symbol of Marcos' disregard for the poor: Manila's poorest citizens lived atop the garbage in makeshift villages. After Marcos was ousted by Corazon Aquino, Smokey Mountain continued to burn, becoming a symbol of collosal, unsolvable national problems. Aquino's successor, Fidel Ramos, dismantled that pile but the garbage and the scavengers moved to San Mateo. And on July 10 last year, in the worst trash-related tragedy in Philippine history, at least 200 squatters died in an avalanche of filth at a different dump. Estrada has hoped that the masses would shrug off his impeachment, allowing him to keep his job on the strength of public support. That was a more plausible scenario when it was merely his political woes that were piling up—not heaps of garbage.

Reported by Nelly Sindayen/Manila

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