CEBU Gov. Hilario Davide III said he won’t remove the big yellow banner bearing the words “Never Again” displayed at the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) because it coincides with his call for good governance.
“We still don’t know who put it there. We are trying to make inquiries now,” he told reporters yesterday.
He said the banner may have been put up by a civic organization called the Movement Against Corruption who made the request at his office last week.
“They requested because this is part of their cause for good governance. For me, it is part of freedom of speech. In our 2013 campaign, that was one of our issues. CICC is a monument of corruption,” Davide said.
Located at the North Reclamation Area, the P800-million edifice was built in 2006 during the time of then-governor Gwendolyn Garcia to serve as venue for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit.
The CICC was damaged when a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the provinces of Cebu and Bohol and typhoon Yolanda ravaged the Visayas in 2013.
The facility is also the subject of a pending graft case before the Ombudsman involving Garcia, whose brother, Winston, will be running against Davide for governor in 2016.