COMMENTARY BY KATRINA LEYCO, Convenor, The Truth Defenders
IN Purok Keon, Barangay Bitnong, Dupax del Norte, the issue is no longer just about a road. It is about whether the rule of law still protects the most vulnerable.
Nearly 100 residents have formally appealed to authorities over the alleged obstruction of a documented road easement. But beyond the paperwork and legal arguments lies a stark reality: poor villagers—children walking to school, senior citizens needing medical care, farmers transporting produce, parents earning daily wages, and indigenous families rooted in ancestral land—are bearing the brunt of actions they neither authorized nor control.
When a road is blocked in an urban center, it is traffic. When a road is blocked in a rural village, it is survival.
Residents recount instances where those needing urgent hospital care had to walk through damaged terrain or transfer to motorcycles just to reach transportation. Farmers reportedly have to unload vegetables and transfer them from one vehicle to another because of an excavated and unrehabilitated portion of the road. For families already living on tight margins, every delay means added cost. Every added cost means less food on the table.
What makes the situation more troubling is the allegation that the barricades were installed by individuals “not actually from the place.” If true, this raises a deeper governance question: how can a small rural community be effectively restrained by parties who do not even reside there?
The residents are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the most basic protection the State promises its citizens—security of access, due process, and equal protection under the law.
Access to a road easement is not a privilege. It is a legally recognized right, fundamental to mobility, commerce, education, and health. When that access is curtailed without lawful authority, the impact is not theoretical. It lands squarely on those least equipped to absorb it: the elderly with chronic illnesses, students trying to reach school, parents commuting for work, indigenous families whose livelihoods depend on the land.
This is where government must step in—not as a political actor, but as a guarantor of order.
If there is a legal basis for the barricades, it must be transparently presented. If there is none, corrective action must be swift. The longer unlawful acts are tolerated, the louder the message becomes: that the poor can be inconvenienced, restricted, or displaced without consequence.
The people of Purok Keon are not asking for confrontation. They are asking for clarity. They are asking that authorities verify the status of the road easement, determine accountability, and restore normalcy grounded in law.
In rural communities like Keon, governance is not measured by speeches or hearings. It is measured by whether a sick grandmother can reach a hospital in time, whether a child can walk to school safely, whether a farmer can bring vegetables to market without obstruction.
When roads are blocked and silence follows, it is the poor who pay the price.
The appeal from Purok Keon is, at its core, a plea for the State to do what it is constitutionally mandated to do: protect its citizens—especially those who have the least power to protect themselves.