With only four days to go before the deadline to pay the P185-million amortization on Cebu City’s South Road Properties (SRP) loan, city residents are treated to a sickening spectacle of Mayor Michael Rama and his critics, the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) bloc, playing a game of chicken to see who folds first.
To rewind, the mayor reminded the BO-PK-dominated City Council to act on the Supplemental Budget 1 (SB1) worth P2.6 billion so the city can pay off the P2.4-billion balance of the SRP loan.
The BO-PK bloc, through its standard-bearer Tomas Osmeña, insists that the city settle the P185-million amortization first without needing to source it from the P8.3-billion payment the city received from developers who have invested in the SRP, again using the excuse that the SRP lot payment is under litigation despite a Regional Trial Court ruling that already dismissed the case filed by ex-prosecutor Romulo Torres.
The obvious motive behind this latest showdown is election politics. To put it bluntly, the BO-PK doesn’t want Rama to earn brownie points with the voters by claiming that he and his allies were responsible for finally paying off the SRP loan balance.
That said, one cannot dismiss their suggestions that other fund sources are available to cover the P185-million payable due on Feb. 20. The BO-PK bloc is simply trying to dictate on the mayor when it comes to spending the city’s budget which he, after having broken away from the BO-PK, clearly resents.
Still there is also some merit in their fears that once the SB1 is approved, there is no stopping Rama from indiscriminately using the payments of the developers for the SRP lots for whatever purposes he deems worthy of spending on.
And when it comes to finances, the mayor doesn’t have a sterling record, as shown by his administration’s constant depletion of the budget for payment of garbage tipping fees to the Consolacion landfill for example.
After having shepherded the SRP’s development, Osmeña must find it galling to see others like Rama benefiting from both the political and economic windfall brought by the city’s centerpiece project.
That said, the payment of the P185 million amortization for the SRP loan is more significant than the collective egos of both Rama and Osmeña.
To the average city resident whose taxes go to paying this gargantuan billion-peso loan, the sight of these two opposing camps brazenly playing Russian roulette with taxpayers’ money is both nauseating and abominable. The city’s taxpayers should not be dragged down into the muck of their political mudslinging and feuding.
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