Last June 30, 2007, former police chief Alfredo Lim took his oath of office as the newly elected mayor of Manila—a mandate that dismayed many, not least the former mayor, Lito Atienza, whose son was defeated by Lim and whose beloved Baywalk project was scrapped, also by Lim. But despite—or perhaps because of—his vigilante style of crime-fighting and no-nonsense approach to governance, many view the hard-edged Lim as the only solution to the mean streets of Manila. ERWIN ROMULO BRINGS HIS INVESTIGATION to City Hall and involves himself in the internal affairs of the mayor they call “Dirty Harry.” 

“If you were given a beat, you pounded that beat on foot” - Alfredo Lim in Nick Joaquin’s biography May Langit Din Ang Mahirap

July 30, 1958, sometime past 2:30 in the morning. Putting down the phone after making the routine call back to the desk, Det. Victoriano Gandia informed the rest of the team—Det. Alfredo S. Lim and Pat. Federico Jaymalin—about a suspicious-looking blue jeep with a TPU license plate cruising around the area of San Nicholas. Inside the vehicle were about five men.

From the Gagalangin area, they rushed to check out the scene, slowing down only as they neared. At night, the dimly lit streets of Manila forced the darkness to congeal in corners while the susurrus of the empty thoroughfares, the sound of a city asleep, only served to amplify the beating in their chests.

The team made a right turn from Jaboneros to Alcaicera—just then they spotted a jeep parked at the corner of San Fernando. There was a man in the driver’s seat; the motor’s engine could be heard. Along the sidewalk, there were four men huddled together.

At the wheel, Gandia drove slowly towards them. But as soon as the light hit the group they began to disperse. “Pulis kami!” shouted Gandia and that was when the veil of pretence was ripped apart. Shots rang out, missing Lim only by a few inches. The jeep sped off, leaving their three companions. One of them ran after the vehicle and was chased by Jaymalin; Lim and Gandia concentrated their fire on the other two. The gunfight that ensued between the two groups didn’t last long—the policemen cutting down their targets quickly. But no sooner did the second man slump to the ground when Lim followed his colleague to chase after the last man. As he ran, the fugitive fired back at the policemen, but the two charged on, firing back until the third man lay in a pool of his blood in the middle of Calle Alcaicera.

His companions lay in theirs a few meters away.

“If someone accuses me of wrongdoing, I’ll be the first to demand an investigation,” says Mayor Alfredo Lim to a group of students from different schools in the city. About the current ZTE controversy surrounding the First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, he says that he’s dismayed at the non-appearance at the first committee hearing on the issue by the department heads summoned to appear. “You seize the bull by the horns,” he says in that distinctive monotone of his, grabbing the air as if taking hold of the animal itself at that very moment. “Parang torero, dapat mabangis ka—hawakan mo yung sungay at tatanungin mo, ‘Anong sinasabi mo?’”

We’re at the conference room a few meters away from his office in City Hall, and Lim is holding this audience with staff-members of their respective school organs. He invites them to ask him anything. He means it, too.

A major part of his platform during his campaign stressed transparency and accountability in government, and today he demonstrates what he means. Accompanied by their teacher, the students bring the matter of their unfinished facilities due to claims by the contractor of insufficient funds to his attention. Lim summons the city engineer at once and—after firing several questions at him—tells him to “get to the bottom of it.” The mayor then declares that he will find funding and make sure everything will be finished at the latest in January.

His answer is curt but not without a hint of a snicker. “You can call me anything. I don’t care,” he says. “Naliligo naman ako tatlong beses isang araw.“

Cheers and applause greet this pronouncement. There will be several in the course of the afternoon.

As if on cue, a student asks if this will be ready by their Junior-Senior prom or even their graduation.

The mayor asks what month they hold their prom.

“February.”

“Di ba sinabi ko January?” smiles Lim.

The room erupts yet again.

The Mayor accepts the praise stoically but not indifferently.

Lim is still not quite the politician, but it’s notable how much he’s developed since the first time we met, barely a month after declaring his intention to run for President. Unlike before, he’s learned to use his spare dialogue and deadpan delivery to his rhetorical advantage. In 1998, he lost that campaign way before any ballots were cast.

Then, Lim couldn’t at all be accused of playing to the crowd—he remained defiant despite many protests to his “shame” campaign, spray-painting warnings on the doors of houses of supposed drug-pushers and quipping that he was only painting on their job descriptions, the way other professionals like doctors or lawyers do. The joke—if indeed Lim was making one—was lost to many of the voting public; but to his political rivals, its damaging potential wasn’t.

News teams investigated Lim’s targets and found that one of them was an elderly woman. She was interviewed and belied any claim that she was a drug dealer. No doubt her appearance didn’t fit the image of Lim’s menace. In full view of the cameras, she would break down in tears, damning Lim and his campaign. The coup de grace of the piece would be footage of interviews with the old lady’s neighbors, each coming forward to speak against the Mayor’s actions. But the most cutting remark came at the tail end of the report, uttered by the neighborhood maton. Broadcast nationwide, it would be the last thing anyone who watched the segment would remember. “Intsik!”

Lim began his career as a policeman in 1951. His first beat was as a patrolman in San Nicholas. In Nick Joaquin’s biography, May Langit Din Ang Mahirap, he quotes Lim saying how “if you were given a beat, you pounded that beat on foot.” No cars or walkie-talkies, he walked every inch of the block he was assigned to. “You began your beat, say, at the southern outermost street. You walked it from one end to the other, where you made a U-turn into the next street, which again you walked from end to end, U-turning into the third street, and so on.” The system had built-in checks and balances. “If you arrive at the northern outermost street in very much less than an hour, you could be accused of skipping several streets on your beat. Or if you arrive at the northern outermost street in very much more than an hour, you could be suspected of having abandoned your post for half an hour or so.”

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