Whose market is it?

Former Senate President Franklin Drilon visited the redeveloped Iloilo Central and Terminal Markets on April 14, declared them comparable to public markets in Europe, and urged Ilonggos to strictly observe laws and regulations lest they undermine investor confidence. Then he said what the city government had been careful not to say out loud: that Ilonggos must prove to SM Prime Holdings that they are worthy of the company’s investment.

That sentence deserves to be read again. A former lawmaker stood inside a publicly owned facility and told the public that they owe a private corporation proof of their worthiness. The markets sit on city government land. They were built with public money and sustained for over a century by the labor of vendors and the patronage of Ilonggo consumers. SM Prime entered through a 25-year lease agreement — a business deal, not a charitable donation. Yet Drilon’s framing was that of a benefactor granting favors to an undeserving populace.

This is not just tone-deaf but also a reversal of the most basic principle of public accountability. In a functioning democracy, it is the private partner that must demonstrate it deserves the privilege of operating on public property — not the other way around. The PHP 3 billion investment is not a gift but a commercial arrangement from which SM Prime expects to profit handsomely. The company occupies roughly 60 percent of the Terminal Market’s floor area, operates its own grocery store inside a public market building, and holds a quarter-century lease. If anyone should be proving their worth, it is the corporation.

Drilon’s intervention also raises a disclosure question that cannot be brushed aside. He serves as an independent director of BDO Unibank Inc., controlled by the Sy family — the same family behind SM Prime Holdings. When a director of an SM-linked entity publicly endorses an SM project, praises the company by name, and pressures the public to comply with arrangements that serve SM’s commercial interests, the appearance of a conflict of interest is unavoidable. The situation required transparency but none was offered.

It is also worth noting the context. Drilon was in Iloilo City for the launch of his memoir at the University of the Philippines Visayas. The market tour was not a scheduled policy intervention. Yet his statements carried the weight of a former Senate president — a weight that landed squarely on the backs of bolanteros who had just endured a violent clearing operation four days earlier.

The bolanteros along Fuentes Street are not anarchists. They are farmers from the towns of Iloilo province who haul vegetables into the city before dawn. They have done this for generations. What changed is not their behavior but their environment: SM now has a grocery inside the building, registered stallholders pay fees that entitle them to protection from outside competition, and the city is enforcing a 2009 ordinance it had ignored for 15 years. Telling these vendors they must prove themselves worthy of SM’s confidence is “class enforcement”.

The Iloilo City government can and should maintain order in its public markets. But order is not the same as obedience. And a public market belongs to the public — not to the company that leases it, and certainly not to the former senator who sits on the board of the company’s bank.