As Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama’s pointman in the City Council, Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella has always been a sober voice calling for doing the right thing for Cebu amidst political static between Team Rama and Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) factions.
The call for unity was first aired in last year’s campaign when he compared unity among city officials to running a marathon. “If only one person is running, he or she will often stumble and fall but if there are many who will join, they will go very far,” or words to that effect.
He made a similar call , echoing Rama’s slogan “Together we can make things happen”, last week when he appealed to the BO-PK bloc to set aside differences and approve the Japanese retirement facility project at the South Road Properties (SRP).
That project was briefly mentioned earlier by the mayor’s ally, Rene Mercado, chairman of the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD), during the first “media get-together” the mayor held after his reelection.
Mercado said he was the one who introduced the Japanese investors and strongly urged the mayor to make it happen.
Of course, the proposal sounds better straight from the source. In this case, a Japanese investor representative explained the project to city officials and the loca media in a briefing at the SRP office.
Initial details look promising enough. Even some hardline BO-PK councilors looked amenable to the project. Still, Councilor Margot Osmeña was right in taking caution, saying the council will have to review the project in detail before giving its seal of approval.
The fact that a huge loan from the Japanese government to Cebu City made the SRP and many other infrastructure projects possible in Cebu under the Metro Cebu Development Projects gave weight to this new proposal.
It would be interesting if the Japanese investors led by Kazuhito Matsuda, president of I Land Way Phils. Inc. could offer the same facilities to Filipino retirees either from abroad or affluent local residents.
Rama is understandably eager to accept the project. He is eyeing revenue rate in millions of pesos which he badly needs to fund his ambitious drainage and road projects within what remains of his three-year-term.
While politics does provide a stumbling block towards eventual approval of the project—the BO-PK may take its sweet time approving the project with an eye for the 2016 elections, where their founder, former congressman Tomas Osmeña, hopes to sit again as mayor – the chances that the project will be built look good at the outset.
Affluent retirees have long been a target market for the national government, including private real estate enterprises.
It’s up to the City Council to weigh whether this is the right partner to provide the bountiful harvest that the SRP, which residents continue to pay for through taxes, was intended to deliver.