With the new Cebu City Council majority, perhaps the administration can no longer blame the opposition for whatever failures it may commit in the course of its tenure in the next three years.
After City Councilor Jerry Guardo switched over to the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) fold, the opposition Barug Team Rama was realistic enough to give way to the new majority though not without some parting shots.
One of these was the transfer station set outside the Inayawan landfill which skirted a Court of Appeals ruling that prohibited the reopening of the dumpsite or its use by the city government in dumping the garbage.
Councilor Joel Garganera had been relentless in needling the local administration in addressing the removal of the garbage at the transfer station that continued to bother nearby residents and businesses.
City Hall’s General Services Office said more than half of the transfer station had been cleared, and they expect the transfer station to be empty of garbage by the end of June based on the promise made by the contractor.
Still, with the new majority in the council, would setting up a transfer station within or inside the landfill be a possibility? That’s something the BO-PK bloc will answer along with whatever plans the administration has in dealing with potential investors at the South Road Properties (SRP).
It is the SRP where perhaps the administration and the opposition will lock horns on, and Team Rama will likely be in a position to contest owing to their closeness with Presidential Assistant to the Visayas Michael Dino.
The Osmeña administration’s plan to sell three hectares of SRP land to an investor at more than P100,000 per square meter earned quite a retort from Dino who found it incredulous that anyone would agree to buy it at such a high price.
One need only pass through the SRP to see how the administration came out with such a price ceiling: it basically looks like beach front property, and anyone who’s traveled enough or has extensive real estate background knows that any property located meters away from the coastline can command high prices.
It would be foolish for the opposition to block any program or project that would benefit a lot of city residents especially the poor just to show to everyone that they are a force to be reckoned with, even with backing from Dino.
It’s easy to say that they can act as fiscalizer to the administration when the very same BO-PK had been an effective stumbling block to former mayor Michael Rama’s plans to pursue the sale of SRP through his own vision of development which ran counter to theirs. Payback should not be the primary motivation for fiscalizing here but public welfare.
And it is the betterment of public welfare that should be the goal of both camps regardless of their political allegiance and differences.