No crystal ball was needed to confirm reports that the Team Rama bloc of the Cebu City Council would corner the committee chairmanships in last week’s inaugural session.
In fact, it would be interesting to know just how they would wield whatever power their committees may have in carrying out what they would consider as programs and policies beneficial to the public.
Since they don’t have the numbers, the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) bloc was appointed as “deputy mayors” by Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who had long been acknowledged as the architect behind the opposition to use the sales proceeds of the South Road Properties (SRP) lots and the P20,000 calamity aid case that resulted in the suspension of former mayor Michael Rama and most of the council.
Being deputy mayors meant they would serve as “alter egos” of Osmeña, who at this early stage plans to close the wagons and do what his predecessor would do which is to isolate the Team Rama bloc and render them inoperative from the get-go.
Though we wonder how the mayor, who said he will even forego this year’s budget, would be able to raise funds for his programs which he already
declared would be kept secret from the Team Rama bloc.
Eventually, the Osmeña administration would have to deal with the Team Rama bloc in mapping out the budget which would follow the mayor’s usual “skin and bones” route.
Again it will be hard to determine how the Team Rama camp which has Councilor Joy Pesquera as chairperson of the powerful budget committee will deal with the proposed budget of the Osmeña administration considering that it will be “skin and bones.”
They would probably crack down on the supplemental budget but unlike the Rama administration which purposely proposed a gargantuan budget and waited for the BO-PK bloc to whittle it down, this situation doesn’t exist for Team Rama which has to rationalize its fiscalizer role in the budget process without coming across as being obstructionist similar to what the BO-PK bloc had been accused of during the former mayor’s tenure.
Despite the generous offer of the Team Rama bloc for committee memberships, the BO-PK bloc is not having any of it, being satisfied with their “deputy mayor” status to even want to be in a committee where they may be bogged down and bossed around.
It is perhaps these deputy mayor functions that Team Rama would keep an eye out for as they pledged to be constructive rather than be obstructionist, but it remains to be seen how much of an influence the former mayor will have in running the bloc behind the scenes.
With this new status quo in the council, Cebu City residents have every reason to expect that both camps would reduce their wranglings to a minimum as they work to ensure that their tenure would mean a better future for them.
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