If Medellin town Mayor Ricardo Ramirez plans to hoard all the revenue collected by the municipal government instead of allocating a substantial portion of it to the province, then he’d better use it to finance projects and programs that would benefit his constituents and give a full accounting of it before the Commission on Audit (COA).
He confirmed the order to withhold the remittance of the province’s share in a post on his Facebook account.
In giving the order, Ramirez pointed out that he made repeated requests to several provincial government officials, including Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III to repair the provincial bridge and roads in Medellin to no avail.
Legal ramifications aside, how would Ramirez use the funds he withheld for the province for Medellin town?
We can only hope that he shows not just on Facebook what he did with the taxes collected from his constituents and provide it with all the financial details that would meet the COA requirements.
The mayor has been using the social networking site to criticize the Davide administration starting with how he felt the provincial government prioritized the needs of towns ruled by the governor’s political allies over other towns whose leaders were under the rival One Cebu party especially in light of the damage Medellin and other northern Cebu towns at the hands of supertyphoon Yolanda last year.
Ramirez also used Facebook to reveal former Capitol security advisor Anthony Loy Madrigal’s closet affair with a job order employee, resulting in the resignation of the two and the second major fiasco of the Davide administration following the controversial hiring of the ill-equipped, poorly trained Black Pearl Security Agency.
Now the mayor is at it again, using Facebook to denounce the governor’s failure to attend to his municipality’s welfare. Which begs the question on whether Ramirez is provoking a confrontation with the governor and use it as political capital for him and the One Cebu party for their 2016 run.
After all, Dumanjug Mayor Nelson Garcia got suspended for supposedly meddling with the affairs of the municipal council headed by a Liberal Party (LP) ally of Davide.
By withholding the province’s share, there is the real danger that Ramirez will encourage other local officials affiliated with the One Cebu party to also withhold their remittances to the province.
And for what, to starve the province of funds that it needs to sustain the provincial government’s operations and programs? Some of the towns, including Medellin may be unable to sustain themselves for long even if they retain all their revenues.
Sooner or later someone’s gotta give and both officials should work their differences out lest Medellin residents be held hostage by their mayor’s refusal to contribute the town’s share to the province.