Attended last Thursday, Aug. 18, the quarterly meeting of the Cebu Citizens’ Press Council which happened to have as their guest Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino, and there were some interesting inputs he gave to local media, not all of which may have seen print or aired over TV and radio.
First off, he did mention that he will be accessible to the public most of the time once his office at the old Malacañang sa Sugbo has been renovated to be of service not only to Cebu residents but also those from the rest of the Visayas such as Samar which Dino told media President Rodrigo Duterte wanted him to give special attention to.
Talk then drifted to a lot of issues, some of which I can barely remember by now, but it dwelt on what his office can do for the Cebuanos and what he can do to regionalize some of the government services that have now been centralized in Imperial Manila.
This is important considering that President Duterte had emphasized for sometime now his marching orders to all government agencies across the country to reduce the processing time of transactions and applications for permits by five days or within the week.
As expected Mr. Dino reiterated his commitment to Cebu’s business community to lobby for the regionalization of the transactions and processing from Manila to the province.
But Dino was particularly guarded when it came to Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña. When asked about him, Dino replied: “We’re not enemies but neither are we friends”, or words to that effect.
Those who care to remember know that Dino is a key official of Fifth Avenue Development Corp. which partnered with the Cebu provincial government for the multi-billion peso Ciudad project.
Despite gaining the support of some barangay officials, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña opposed the project, citing the traffic congestion that it will cause along the Banilad-Talamban or BanTal corridor.
Some armchair research pointed to recent developments towards addressing that concern such as an amended Build-Transfer-Operate (BTO) agreement supposedly signed between the province and Fifth Avenue that would open key access points connecting IT Park to Cuenco Avenue in Cebu City.
Whether that would convince Osmeña to reconsider the project or not remains to be seen. Coincidentally or not, Osmeña was the mayor then when he blocked attempts by Davide’s predecessor, former governor Gwendolyn Garcia, to jumpstart the project.
Anyone who has lived in Metro Cebu in the past decade or so knows about the political enmity between Garcia and Osmeña. When I asked during the CCPC forum if he divested his shares at Fifth Avenue, Dino replied that he did in keeping with government requirements to fully disclose and divest their shares in corporations.
Since he is a government official, it would of course be improper for him to lobby for the project and Dino reiterated this when he said it’s up to the Capitol through Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III to lobby for the project.
“It’s (Ciudad project is) for the good of Cebu,” Dino said, though not as emphatically as the promise he made to Cebu’s leaders to decentralize processing of government requirements which is understandable.
There’s little doubt that Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III will pursue the Ciudad project which consists of a series of commercial establishments including but not limited to a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) center.
But since he’s negotiating with Mayor Osmeña for the resolution of the plight of the settlers occupying province-owned lots under Provincial Ordinance 93-1, Davide may be biding his time until the perfect opportunity comes along.
Though the provincial government may have made up its mind, it’s interesting to see if and it’s a big IF, the Team Rama bloc in the Cebu City Council do decide to support the Ciudad project and potentially setting themselves up for a collision course anew with Mayor Osmeña.
It’s still early days, but Team Rama’s support for the Ciudad project may earn them points with Dino, whose appointment as presidential assistant for the Visayas they also supported with the long view that perhaps that through Dino, they can get President Rodrigo Duterte’s ear.
Wasn’t it former Cebu City mayor Michael Rama who said in a recent press conference — yes, that press conference in which he vigorously denied President Duterte’s assertion that he was a drug lord protector — that he and his allies considered switching over to the Padayon Pilipino at least before he was included in Duterte’s narco list?
A bridge to Malacañang or a key ally in the Palace’s circle is what Team Rama needs if they do want to secure a political advantage over the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) and that bridge/key ally happens to be Michael Dino.
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