There is some merit in the proposal to allow the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to temporarily take over Barangay Ermita in Cebu City for six months.
After all, it is the President who will appoint the caretaker for Barangay Ermita after the Ombudsman ordered the suspension of its barangay officials for failure to coordinate with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in its raid of a suspected drug tiangge (flea market) in the area last year.
As an extension of the President’s will and mandate, the DILG can appoint caretaker officials for the barangay, but it needs the recommendation of the mayor, or in this case, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who already has his candidates for the post.
They include Barangay Tejero chairman Jessielou Cadungog, former councilor Augustus “Jun” Pe and even SPO1 Adonis Dumpit, the controversial police officer and former close-in body guard of Osmeña.
While Cadungog and Pe have political experience, Cadungog has his own problems with drug dealers in Tejero while Dumpit has zero experience as a public official even if the post is only for six months.
That leaves Pe, who is from Cebu City’s north but may have no problem switching over if he does get picked. But the Team Rama bloc in the City Council and their ally, suspended Barangay Ermita chairman Felicisimo Rupinta, aren’t too thrilled with Osmeña and his allies taking over the barangay, and neither is Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino.
Even if he is by essence President Rodrigo Duterte’s alter ego in the Visayas, we really don’t know the extent of Dino’s influence in the local political scene other than the fact that Team Rama-aligned officials have sought his patronage for access to the President.
In fact it was Dino who said that the DILG should handle the situation in Ermita and excused himself from further commenting on who should be appointed other than saying the person should be non-partisan.
While saying publicly that he isn’t getting involved in the process by explaining that President Duterte has bigger concerns for him to handle, the fact that he bothered to comment at all through a press statement suggests that he isn’t taking the situation in Barangay Ermita lightly.
Amid the mayor’s threat to file charges against Dino, still it isn’t the first time that the DILG assumed control over a local government unit. It took over Compostela town when a petition to suspend the proclamation of the winning candidates was upheld by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in 2010.
And the DILG can always coordinate with the PDEA when it comes to going after drug dealers. So long as basic services remain constant in Ermita, there is little for residents to worry about.
Still, it remains to be seen if Osmeña can wield enough clout to persuade the President into appointing his people to temporarily head Ermita.
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