Dumanjug Mayor Nelson Garcia’s appeal to Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III to lift his 60-day preventive suspension, while well within his rights, may as well be dead in the water based on the governor’s previous statement.
“If he continues to state the same grounds (for lifting his suspension), then I will reject it,” Davide told reporters early this week.
The mayor filed a separate graft complaint against Vice Mayor Efren Guntrano Gica. The two officials can slug it out in court for as long as they want. Their constituents won’t actually care one whit except if it would affect the delivery of public services and programs.
The preventive suspension, which is not a penalty as the main case of alleged abuse of power still has to be decided by the Provincial Board, was served so the mayor cannot influence or intimidate witnesses or the ongoing inquiry of the PB into Gica’s administrative complaint that Mayor Garcia, by appointing a secretary to the municipal council, effectively usurping the council’s authority to appoint their own.
It was no small coincidence that Garcia’s alleged action mirrored that of his eldest sister, then Cebu governor Gwendolyn Garcia when she cut the budget and ignored the appointments for consultants made by the late vice governor Gregorio Sanchez Jr. who had turned against her and belonged to the opposition.
That same charge of usurpation would later bite her back, resulting in Gwen’s six-month suspension in 2013– this time a penalty – and her larger-than-life defiance of the Palace suspension order by holing up in her office, even barricading the windows and doors and daring the police to bodily carry her out.
With a new administration in 2013, the Garcias expected their hold over the province to wane a bit. Nelson’s preventive suspension, the first time a Cebu governor has actually disciplined a town mayor that way, is proof of that decline. Regardless of their political fortunes, Mayor Nelson Garcia must realize that it’s better to sit out what he earlier called a 60-day “vacation” than engage in an ultimately futile bid to ask the governor to lift it.
So far there have been no complaints of abuse and neglect aired by Dumanjug residents against Gica, who’s now acting mayor. Neither have there been moves initiated by the Garcia camp to go for high political drama again, to stage rallies and pickets against the vice mayor.
The mayor himself acknowledged that political reality when he went to Davide to tell him that he would serve the suspension order even if his father, former congressman Pablo Garcia is appealing on his behalf to reconsider it.
Rather than hole up in his office, Nelson is doing the right thing by threshing out whatever issues he has against Gica in court. With a new administration, he knows he and the Garcia clan can no longer throw their weight around as in the good old days.
Two months will just fly. It’s better for Mayor Garcia to sit this one out.