Cebu holds its breath as two political giants fight over progress

Written by Willy Rodolfo III Reporter

Thursday, 30 April 2009 23:15

IN 2004 Gwendolyn Garcia was elected the first woman governor of Cebu province by a hairline. One of the first who greeted her was Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who embraced Garcia despite her defeating his own nephew in the gubernatorial race. It was seen as a new age in Cebu politics, two aggressive and strong chief executives holding the provincial and city posts. Progress seemed unstoppable. Several years after, the two chief executives are in a war of attrition, firing one-liners at each other from City Hall and the Capitol sitting on both ends of Osmeña Boulevard. The mayor called Garcia the “queen of darkness,” among others, while she called him a “temperamental erratic bully.” Amid the headlines, the two camps are girding for a long war in Congress, in the courts and in the media, especially with the 2010 elections approaching. Meanwhile, multibillion-peso projects that Cebuanos have been waiting for decades are left in the balance, and the fate of 5,000 urban poor families pinned in the middle of the conflict continues to hang in the balance. The past two weeks, the conflict escalated. The governor together with her father, former governor now Rep. Pablo Garcia (Cebu, 2nd district) and younger brother Rep. Pablo John Garcia (Cebu, 3rd district), unleashed their “Constitutional storm” against the city and its P25-billion joint-venture deal with Filinvest Land Inc. over a fifth of the 250-hectare reclaimed South Road Properties. Pablo John, in a privileged speech at the House of Representatives, called on Congress to hold an inquiry on the deal. A scrutiny, he said, was in the interest of Cebu residents, even though he and the Capitol have no formal jurisdiction over Cebu City. He challenged Vice Mayor (acting mayor) Michael Rama to a public debate over the deal and threatened to go to court to stop the Filinvest deal. Mayor-on-leave Osmeña, recovering from several chemotherapy sessions and a surgery to remove cancer in his bladder, balked from his hospital bed in Texas in the US and challenged Capitol to file charges in court instead of in the media. He vowed to get well and face Congress if the inquiry pushes through. The city then fired back, with the City Council set to pass a rezoning ordinance—turning province-owned properties in the city into residential areas, effectively blocking any plans of Capitol to clear the lots of informal settlers reported to be turning it into money-making enterprises. It also puts in jeopardy plans of recovering and developing some 250 hectares of province-owned property in the city, including Camp Lapulapu of the Armed Forces Central Command. Moratorium on development Meanwhile there’s a moratorium on development projects in the city’s northern corridor, where Capitol projects are located. The Capitol’s own P1.2-billion joint-venture project with a Hong Kong and Filipino group for Spanish-era mall is, at the moment, shelved. “This conflict is counterproductive and feeds on nothing but hubris,” Cebu Business Club president Gordon Alan Joseph told the BusinessMirror. “I really think it’s time to stop thinking parochially and think of the welfare of the entire province of Cebu—of which Cebu City is necessarily an integral part.” Cebu’s boasted brand of mature and high-level politics, sealed away from business and progress, has been breached. And the two kingpins of local politics are bent on stopping each other’s pet projects to prove a point and to prove who’s stronger. Roots of conflict The conflict started in 2005, when an unprecedented plan between the city and the province to swap lands collapsed at the last minute. The city was offering its vacant lot at the North Reclamation area, in exchange for province-owned properties inside the city occupied by 5,000 families of informal settlers. Everything was set when the discussion suddenly shifted to a value-for-value swap instead of land size-for-size. With the two groups disagreeing on the exact value of their properties, the deal got botched. Governor Gwen claims she wants to ensure the financial stability of the province by making revenues out of their properties, while Mayor Tomas said he wants to protect the welfare of his voters. Both claim to have the moral obligation to fight each other. According to Rama, the anointed successor of Osmeña in 2010, the city still believes it has to protect 25,000 of its residents who could lose their homes if Capitol recovers its properties. He said any further resolution to the conflict should be based on the security of the residents who are Cebu City voters, not provincial voters. But he believes the Capitol’s motives are more than just making revenues. He said there are bigger political plans at stake. He did not discount the possibility of the Garcia family planning to wrest control over the city. “We can sit down [with Capitol] because we are here to fulfill a vision for Cebu City and not to feed the ambitions of a few,” he told the BusinessMirror. “My fear is by 2010, one family will claim to have control over Cebu and sell Cebu to national politicians.” Rama said Capitol’s interference in SRP is anti-Cebuano and is a form of economic sabotage. Since 1995, City residents have been paying for the loan amortization for the SRP to Japan, of up to P800 million a year—nearly half the city’s annual budget. The loan payments, set to run up to 2020, have sacrificed services while city residents and officials endured criticisms and even claims by neighbor Talisay City, whose officials suddenly said the completed SRP encroached on their territory and therefore should be theirs. “This deal [Filinvest] will wipe out the city’s liquidity problems. If they [province] are interested in the welfare of the people, they should sit down with us and help complete this project,” Rama said. “Let them show me a better deal and I will look at it. But they have not. They want to stop the project and sacrifice the residents of Cebu City.” Filinvest, other deals in limbo The city’s deal with Filinvest, awarded early this year, is comprised of a straight purchase of some 10 hectares of prime SRP land worth P2 billion, and a profit-sharing scheme over development revenues of the remaining 40 hectares. Rep. Garcia said the deal was questionable. In his privileged speech he asked why the reclamation project was done without authority of Congress; why Filinvest will get titles of the lot even without completing the whole purchase payment and despite what he called an attempt to avoid government bidding requirements by entering into a sale/joint venture hybrid deal. He also questioned the need to have the city spend for the road network and shoulder the costs of registration and transfer of ownership. “Never have I seen a relationship where one party is as committed to bleeding the other dry, and the other doesn’t complain, but calls it unconditional love,” Garcia said in his privileged speech. Rama questioned why the Capitol posed as a bidder-challenger to Filinvest’s unsolicited proposal if they seriously believed the terms of the contract are dubious. But Garcia said that as Capitol was a bidder, they have an interest in the project. “Beyond that, I think all Cebuanos should take an interest in this contract. It is precisely because of the perceived lack of interest on the part of Cebuanos in the deal that these highly anomalous and illegal provisions were given the opportunity to be inserted,” Garcia told the BusinessMirror. With the Filinvest deal on the chopping block, other wholesale deals with the SM and Ayala groups, who have been reported to have informally divided the SRP and agreed to complement each other and with Filinvest, is on indefinite limbo. So is the vision of an SRP with 80,000 jobs, a bustling mini metropolis and a complex of skyrises to rival our Asian neighbors. Political rezoning Political insiders see an attempt to return the Garcia family into Cebu City politics, nine years after the downfall of the governor’s cousin, former mayor Alvin Garcia, in the hands of his former mentor Tomas Osmeña. Rama, who will be most affected when the Garcias mount a comeback, is unfazed. “Let the politics of Cebu City be left for the people of Cebu City,” Rama said. “It’s free to dream, but I trust the people of Cebu City will vote for people who have protected their cause and share their vision.” He said a Rama administration will only continue the good things and long-term vision of Osmeña and the local party he leads. Even Rama, with all his friendliness and amiability, is being doubted by some Osmeña loyalists to have cozied up to the Garcias. Rama, after all, is the most viable successor to Tomas—whether he sticks with his party with Tomas as the leader or jumps into the Garcia family wagon with Gwen as the boss.  The 2010 elections will not only define the continued existence of the country’s oldest political clan—the Osmeñas—and the apex of the rise of the Osmeñas’ former lawyers and lieutenants, the Garcias. It will also define the direction of Cebu City, one of the most progressive cities in the country, whose progress has been defined by the “architecture” and long-term plan set by Tomas and his local party BO-PK. Strongman Tomas is the last of the Osmeñas in politics and with no clear successor from the family. His son Miguel is too young and wife Margot too uninterested in politics. His brother, former senator Sergio III, has health issues, while cousins former senator John Henry and his brother former governor Emilio said they have retired. John’s son John Gregory seems far from making a comeback with a string of drug chemical charges against him and without the support of his own father. Tomas himself is still fighting cancer in Texas as of the present. The Garcias, in contrast, have more options: aside from the governor who has one more term in 2010, and two congressmen, there’s still the governor’s brother Winston who is GSIS president—himself a former Cebu province board member—as well as several more potential candidates from the family of former mayor Alvin. The governor’s younger brother insists the family has no interest in Cebu City politics and they do not have an intention of going head-on against Osmeña in anything and everything. “The ideal scenario is where the mayor and governor respect each other. They don’t have to love each other. Just respect. You can’t have the mayor calling the governor ‘Queen of Darkness.’ That’s ungentlemanly and counterproductive,” Garcia said. “The family has repeatedly stated that we have no interest in Cebu City politics. If we were [interested], then I would have run in the city when Tomas Osmeña asked me to be his councilor,” he added. “But we will always be interested in how the city is being run because that is the right thing to do.”