LAST week, Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte issued a suspension order against the above-ground portion of the construction of the Metro Rail Transit Line 7 (MRT-7) station at the Quezon Memorial Circle (QMC). The move was made after complaints, or so Belmonte said, that “the station was encroaching on the park’s integrity,” meaning the tomb of and vaguely dystopian memorial to the Philippines’ second president and the city’s namesake. Belmonte’s action is an excellent example of how local governments here are, more often than not, the biggest roadblocks to substantial development and widely regarded by investors as spanners in the cogs.
The specific complaint of the city government, apparently, is that the original plan for the MRT-7 station in the park — most of it will be underground, and that portion of the construction project is not covered by the suspension order — had a surface structure with a footprint of 4,997 square meters, but the ongoing construction is for a much larger structure; nearly five times as large, the city said.