The reported appearance of businessman Michael Dino at the press conference where President-elect Rodrigo Duterte showed off his Cabinet members was a bit of surprise to anyone familiar with his involvement in the Davao City mayor turned president’s campaign in Cebu.
But what are these reports that his own campaign team in the Bisaya Na Pud movement is calling on the president to reconsider Dino’s appointment as Presidential Assistant to the Visayas?
While they may have their own reasons, the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC), or at least majority of them headed by their president and concurrent Barangay Tisa chairman Philip Zafra and other Team Rama allied councilors, also have their own reason for backing him up.
Chief among these reasons is the unceremonious (it usually is for any politician) downfall of their leader, outgoing Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama to erstwhile mentor and now incoming Cebu City Mayor-elect Tomas Osmeña which makes finding a new political benefactor to source funding support from an immediate priority.
One can only smile and see through the motives of these Team Rama allies — who would likely not be called Team Rama for long but will still be the opposition albeit with a different name — as they signed that manifesto of support for Dino’s appointment as presidential assistant to the Visayas.
With Acting Cebu City Mayor Margot Osmeña bearing down on barangay officials who refused to return their city-issued vehicles for a physical inventory, Zafra and his allies know they need someone with connections to the Palace to get them some political and financial support to sustain and shield them from what they expect to be a hostile new administration.
As presidential assistant, it remains to be seen how much of an influence Dino will have over funding of programs and projects not only in Cebu City but the rest of Central Visayas.
But it won’t likely serve Dino well if he continues to push through with the Ciudad project that his company Fifth Avenue Development Corp. pursued some years back only to be met with opposition from then congressman Osmeña.
When push comes to shove, the incoming mayor will stand his ground and maintain his opposition to the project which he sees as a major cause for any traffic gridlock that would occur in the Banilad-Talamban corridor.
And it would be doubtful if Dino can somehow convince reelected Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III, who considers the incoming mayor as “his mentor” or even President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, who has publicly voiced disdain over any lobbying of favors from allies and Cabinet officials, to support the Ciudad project.
That said, would the new opposition bloc in the Cebu City Council play their hand and pursue the Ciudad project given their numbers? If this week’s “surrender” (again it looked like one) by the remaining Team Rama allied councilors to the incoming Osmeña administration in relation to the protracted budget impasse is any indication, any numbers game they may play will go either way.
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Speaking of the Cebu City opposition, one has to ask who will lead the bloc now that Rama is gone or out of power?
It could be either one of them but this early, one can see Councilor-elect Joy Pesquera tackling an active opposition role.
In her Facebook page, she questioned why the police are only intensifying their operations against illegal drugs now that Mayor-elect Osmeña set up a cash reward system when they practically had all the time in the world to do so during the Rama administration.
But one can recall last year’s police raid in a drug den nearby City Hall and Rama’s subsequent decision to transfer the police outpost to another area instead of intensifying the crackdown on the drug menace as an indication of the Rama administration’s rather soft stance against the drug menace.
We’re not even talking about the allegations of drug use raised against Rama which the outgoing mayor refuted but which may or may not have worked against him in the campaign period.
That said, I don’t know if Pesquera can command the same type of loyalty that Rama had over his people when he was still mayor. Will Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella be that opposition leader?
Though he comes across as mild-mannered and cooperative, one cannot peg Labella as a yes-man now that Osmeña is the mayor unlike during his partnership with Rama when he simply agrees with everything the outgoing mayor says or does.
Which probably leaves one speculating that incoming Councilor Raymond Garcia may take up that role. His family name and his father being a former mayor doesn’t hurt his chances too. It’s still early days though, but why stop the fun of speculating? Politics remains to be a favored past time of the Cebuanos and the Filipinos for that matter.
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