Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama simply wants the Aquino administration to fund and implement his chosen projects rather than listen to proposals from his predecessor, former mayor and congressman Tomas Osmeña.
That’s at the heart of his lament last week about how the national government was leaving Cebu City out of the picture. A political filter is needed to check the landscape and see that’s certainly not the case.
There’s the Sergio Osmeña Road concreting project completed in March in the North Reclamation Area. The road detours and ensuing traffic congestion had commuters and motorists howling for months. Rama can’t forget it because it was his idea to rip out the center island, including the remaining trees, to make it a wide, more speed-friendly national highway.
Then there’s a P10-billion World Bank-funded Bus Rapid Transit to be piloted in Cebu City in 2016, a deal only the national government could close. But it happens to be a long-ago initiative of Tommy Osmeña during his first term as mayor in the 1990s. Good thing Mayor Rama welcomes it.
But that’s not what he meant about his lamentation, Rama said. What he meant was that, aside from his projects that didn’t get the green light (like rebuilding the Cebu City Medical Center), the city didn’t get new infrastructure for the hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings which started this month.
Mandaue City, in contrast, had “millions” in public works. That includes some of Mandaue’s nine simultaneous national road and drainage projects which resulted in “unbearable” traffic in Cebu City.
Fresh in Rama’s mind was his 2011 Palace meeting with President Aquino, Public Works and Highways Secretary Rogelio Singson and then Trade and Industry secretary Mar Roxas , where he lobbied against flyovers, a priority championed by Cebu City Rep. Raul del Mar and then congressman Osmeña. What Rama wanted were flared intersections instead to ease traffic.
Rama indeed took the fallout for sticking to his guns. He took the side of advocates of the Movement for a Livable Cebu and nuns in the Asilo Milagrosa. No flyovers followed, but Rama has been given the cold shoulder by Aquino since then.
When Rep. Bebot Abellanosa introduced plans for a DPWH-planned SMART tunnel in N. Bacalso Avenue, Rama would have none of it. He insisted on road widening first.
Rama blames partisan politics for his limited elbow room with the DPWH, which is why he’s campaigning for Vice President Jejomar Binay.
In any case, Rama isn’t totally helpless. He now has over P8 billion in proceeds from the sale of two South Road Properties (SRP) lots. With that at his disposal, city residents expect him to finally deliver on projects and not have to beg from the national government. Will he complain less now?
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