To paraphrase Mark Twain, suppose you are a member of the Manila city council. And suppose also that you are an idiot—but that would be redundant.

The city council yesterday approved on second reading an ordinance that runs directly counter to Supreme Court rulings that call for the transfer of the giant depots of the Big three oil companies from the thickly populated Pandacan district. The new ordinance, authored by a member of the council majority allied with Mayor Alfredo Lim by the name of Arlene Koa, amends two earlier local laws that were passed in 2001 giving the oil companies six years to remove their dangerous depots from the banks of the Pasig River.

City Ordinances 8027 and 8119 ordering the transfer of the oil depots were upheld by two Supreme Court rulings in 2007 and 2008, which both dismissed cases filed by the Big Three and the Energy Department to keep the depots in Pandacan purportedly because of the high cost of relocating them. For those pea-brained city aldermen who are supporting the new local law, here’s part of the high court ruling last year, which was written by Justice Renato Corona and concurred with by the majority in the tribunal:

“Essentially, the oil companies are fighting for their right to property. They allege that they stand to lose billions of pesos if forced [to] relocate. However, based on the hierarchy of constitutionally protected rights, the right to life enjoys precedence over the right to property. The reason is obvious: life is irreplaceable, property is not.”

Environment Secretary Lito Atienza, during whose term as Manila mayor the two earlier ordinances were passed, expressed surprise at the new move to keep the depots in Pandacan. “If these councilors want to commit suicide, that’s their decision,” Atienza said. “But after all we’ve been through, the legal battles we fought to get the Supreme Court to uphold these very important laws, the current council now wants to put Manila’s residents in harm’s way by a stroke of the pen. It’s unbelievable.”

But there’s more to the Koa ordinance, which is now as good as approved, than just keeping the oil depots. In an apparent effort to disguise their intent of making the oil companies happy, the new local law reverts the 33 hectares of land used by the depots into industrial zones, thus legitimizing their continued stay—and the land being used by all other dangerous factories and plants in the city, as well.

The earlier ordinances that were upheld by the Supreme Court reclassified the area as a residential zone and ordered the closure of the depots of Chevron Caltex, Petron Corp. and Pilipinas Shell on the grounds that they posed grave environmental threats to Manilans and were a possible target of terrorist groups. In the Koa ordinance, “petroleum refineries and oil depots” were listed under “highly pollutive/extremely hazardous industries.” But it quickly added that “the land[s]... where the existing industries are located, the operation of which are permitted under Section 1 hereof, are hereby classified as [for] Industrial Use.”

“It is mind-boggling that despite the classification of the oil depots as highly pollutive/extremely hazardous industries in the proposed ordinance, the [council] still opts to retain them in the City of Manila by reclassifying their land use to industrial use, thereby placing in danger the safety and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants,” said anti-depot activists Vladimir Cabigao and Bonifacio Tumbokon of the Social Justice Party, in a petition to the Supreme Court to stop the new local law’s passage.

You have to wonder if, in the minds of the councilors of Manila, the welfare of the oil companies is more important than that of their constituents. And then, you have to wonder why.

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In their various statements in defense of keeping the oil depots in Pandacan, spokesmen for the Big Three have estimated that it would cost them P30 billion to relocate their facilities. This huge figure leads to the suspicion that the oil companies may have decided that they could persuade the city council to reverse itself for a lot cheaper.

Right now, why the current council would risk the ire of the Supreme Court—and jeopardize the health and safety of city residents—just to accommodate the Big Three is anyone’s guess. Maybe the councilors who voted for the new ordinance were offered free gasoline in every Caltex, Petron or Shell filling station.

But the fact remains that the city council, on its own, has no right to act in contravention of a Supreme Court decision, especially one that has been issued with finality like the ones concerning the Pandacan oil depots. Try as they might, the councilors just do not have that authority.

“While it is a general rule that municipal corporations have the power to enact ordinances, it is also a recognized exception that that power should not be exercised when it would be contrary to law, morals, good custom, public order and public policy,” as Cabigao and Tumbokon told the high court. “Under Article 8 of the New Civil Code, judicial decisions applying or interpreting the laws or the Constitution shall form a part of the legal system of the Philippines,” and cannot be reversed by mere ordinances, they added.

At the same time, the petitioners asked the Supreme Court to order the Manila Regional Trial Court to enforce the tribunal’s order for the three oil companies to submit to the local court a comprehensive relocation schedule to move out its assets and personnel from Pandacan within 90 days of the high court’s decision. Maybe the judge in charge of enforcing the order was also offered free gas, since the three-month period for submitting the relocation plan has long since lapsed and no one has heard of any plan from the Big Three to relocate.

But perhaps it is a bit harsh to call the councilors pushing the Koa ordinance idiots just because they took the side of the oil companies against the people who voted them into office and the highest court in the land. Maybe these councilors are really smart—like in the phrase, some are smarter than others.