Creating a mountain out of a molehill

By Antonio Calleja

A localized clearing operation involving ambulant vendors – “bolanteros”- in Iloilo City has quickly grown into a much larger issue. What began as a routine attempt to regulate street activity escalated into confrontation, went viral, drew in multiple public officials, and is now being framed in broader political and even ideological terms. The speed of that escalation gives the impression of a complex crisis. In reality, the situation is far more straightforward: people are trying to earn daily income in places where customers are, and the city is trying to enforce rules that were not designed for that kind of activity. The gap between those two realities—and how it was handled—turned a manageable situation into a bigger and more difficult problem.

The first mistake was not in communication. It was in approach. Clearing should never have been part of the solution in the first place. Removing vendors from a location does not remove their need to earn. It does not change the fact that many operate on a day-to-day basis, with limited capital, and must position themselves where demand exists. In that context, clearing is not a fix. It is a pause. Vendors leave, then return, because the conditions that brought them there have not changed. When clearing is used in a situation like this, it does not resolve tension—it resets it, often at a higher level.

This reveals the underlying issue. The problem is not simply that vendors are in the wrong place. The problem is that there is no right place for them within the current arrangement. The system is built around formal stalls and structured participation. But a large part of the real economy operates outside that model—small-scale, mobile, low-capital, and dependent on daily turnover. When there is no workable space for that kind of activity, it does not disappear. It adapts. It moves into the gaps. Clearing, in that sense, is not correcting a violation. It is reacting to a mismatch.

Once the clearing operation happened, the issue changed. It stopped being a quiet management concern and became a visible confrontation. That moment—captured, shared, and discussed—compressed the entire issue into a single frame: authority on one side, livelihood on the other. At that point, the task of public officials was no longer just to enforce rules. It was to manage how the situation would be understood.

This is where the second set of mistakes took hold. Instead of narrowing the issue and lowering the temperature, post-incident responses largely moved in the opposite direction. The dominant line that emerged emphasized three points: that ambulant vendors operate outside the city’s primary responsibility except under limited conditions, that they are allowed only within tightly controlled windows such as market days, and that the system itself will not adjust to accommodate individual circumstances. Alongside this, suggestions were introduced that the confrontation may have been influenced or “instigated” by outside actors.

Taken together, these responses rest on a single assumption—that the current system is already adequate, and that any breakdown is caused by behavior rather than conditions. But that assumption is exactly what the incident had already called into question. If the system were sufficient, the situation would not have escalated in the way it did. By focusing on compliance, discipline, and possible orchestration, these responses avoided the more immediate and visible reality: vendors were present because they needed to be, and they were operating where the market actually is.

The insistence that the system “will not bend” is particularly revealing. It frames the issue as a matter of enforcing rules rather than assessing whether those rules still fit the situation. It suggests that the only available responses are compliance or removal. In doing so, it closes off the possibility that adjustment may be necessary – not as a concession, but as a practical response to how economic activity actually works on the ground.

The introduction of “instigation” further complicated the situation. Whether or not there are actors attempting to influence events at the margins is not the central issue. The reason the situation resonated is because it reflected something people recognize: the difficulty of earning a living under constrained conditions. By shifting attention toward possible orchestration, the response did not regain control of the narrative. It weakened it. It created the impression that the city was explaining the conflict rather than understanding it.

Operationally, similar signals reinforced this direction. References to changed behavior, unfamiliar participants, or possible inducements may have served to justify stricter enforcement internally, but externally they added to the perception that the focus had moved away from the actual problem. Instead of addressing the gap that produced the situation, the discussion turned toward who was involved and why they were there.

The executive response from Mayor Raisa Treñas-Chu was more measured. By combining firm enforcement with recognition of hardship, she helped stabilize the situation in the short term and avoided some of the more escalatory framing. Her approach acknowledged both the need for order and the reality of livelihood pressures, which allowed her to speak across different segments of public sentiment. However, even this approach remains limited. It still assumes that the current arrangement—market days, existing rules, and enforcement—is fundamentally workable. That assumption is not resolved by asserting it. It is tested by outcomes, and those outcomes remain uneven.

The effect of these combined responses is clear. They did not simply fail to resolve the issue. They deepened the city’s position. By defending the current approach and attributing conflict to behavior or external influence, the city reduced its own room to adjust. At the same time, it signaled to the public that it may not fully recognize why the situation emerged in the first place.

This is what allowed the issue to expand. What began as a localized enforcement matter opened space for broader narratives—about fairness, access, and eventually even ownership and control. Once that shift happens, the issue is no longer confined to the original problem. It becomes a platform for wider arguments. At that point, resolution becomes more difficult, not because the original issue is complex, but because it has been layered with additional meaning.

A useful contrast can be found in the response of Governor Arthur Defensor Jr., who, while affirming the need to respect city rules, also acknowledged that the situation requires a fix and that work toward a solution is ongoing. This framing – discipline paired with recognition that adjustment is necessary – does not assume that enforcement alone is sufficient. It leaves room for change. That difference, though subtle, is important. It signals an understanding that the issue is not fully addressed by existing arrangements.

The lesson here is straightforward. The situation did not become larger because it was inherently complex. It became larger because a simple, manageable problem was approached with the wrong tools and then defended in the wrong terms. Clearing was used where accommodation was needed. Explanation was used where recognition was required. And as a result, a small issue expanded into something much harder to contain.

The path forward depends on changing the starting point. As long as the situation is treated primarily as a problem of non-compliance or provocation, responses will continue to miss the mark. The issue will not settle until it is acknowledged that these vendors are not simply out of place. They are present because the current system has not yet provided a realistic place for them to be.

Urban Signals is the commentary platform of Antonio Calleja, a macroeconomics, urban policy and regional growth dynamics analyst focusing on metropolitan development, infrastructure finance, and institutional reform in emerging Philippine growth centers.