After being clobbered in last week’s elections, there’s more bad news for outgoing Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) agreed last weekend to allow the Department of Interior and Local Government to enforce a suspension order by the Office of the President against him and several officials.
It is now up to the DILG to implement the suspension. If one were to recall, the suspension order against Rama and other officials stemmed from their passage of the P20,000 calamity aid to city government employees and officials.
The suspension order was stayed by the Comelec since it came out during the campaign period. Now that the elections are over, there’s no legal impediment against its enforcement though legal remedies are open to Rama.
It’s noteworthy that Comelec cleared the enforcement of the suspension order more than a month before the terms of Rama and the other officials expire on June 30.
Many thought that inasmuch as the mayor lost that he should be allowed to finish his term. Many also thought that with his victory, Mayor-elect Tomas Osmeña could afford to be magnanimous, but apparently his comeback is tainted with vengeance.
As he announced recently, Osmeña wants to cancel the sale of the South Road Properties (SRP) lots to the SM-Ayala consortium and Filinvest because, he said, the sale is dubious and anomalous.
The mayor forgot that it was the Commission on Audit that pegged the price of the lots and the sale was done through open public bidding. I think it would not be easy to nullify the sale due to the legal consequences that may arise if Osmeña insisted on canceling it.
And that planned cancellation will encounter rough waters now that Team Rama is the majority bloc in the City Council. The bloc, like the vice mayor, knows that the sale was above board and not tainted with anomalies because it underwent public bidding.
I am hoping the mayor-elect would respect the transactions undertaken by the previous administration. If I were him, if he truly believed that the deal was dubious and anomalous, then by all means press charges in court.
It is best that the mayor-elect proves his accusation before the courts of law. I think the referendum is not the right venue to settle the issue because it was a perfected transaction of sale and not a policy issue.
Another issue that the mayor-elect should decide on is the fate and future of the Cebu City Medical Center. He said he would use the entire budget set aside for the city hospital to pay instead for the insurance coverage of the city’s poor.
That way, he said, the poor can avail of hospital services in the city’s best private hospitals. I am not too sure if the CCMC will be finished in Osmeña’s term. The CCMC is the hospital for the poor and it’s different when one is admitted at a private hospital especially if one is poor.
I am hoping that the mayor-elect would be enlightened enough about the significance of maintaining a hospital for the poor, a hospital that is both professionalized and insulated from partisan politics.
CCMC has a future and it can serve the medical needs of the city’s indigent constituents. It has the potential to be a world class hospital that is geared to serve the poor people of the city.
I am hoping that the mayor-elect would spare the CCMC and use it to serve the poor people of the city.