A friendly neighborhood fastfood

Re-elected Pasay City Mayor Peewee Trinidad was interviewed by ANC the other day. He was the Metro Manila mayor who was buffeted by severe political storms shortly before the election season commenced. His "dismissal" from office capped his multiple woes. I could still recall his consequent ouster from city hall in a rather very disturbing scene. No matter how the high officialdom glossed over the rampage, I could discern the malice behind the move. But, even if it was apparent to me that the administration of Her Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could have inspired the disadvantaged situation of Trinidad (just like what happened Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay) I would not want to say what was obvious. After all, I write about Mayor Trinidad today, not for his beating the grave odds stacked against him by an oppressive regime but for a particular refreshing item he mentioned in the interview.

The Pasay City mayor spoke of the benefits his city got from the economic boom at the reclamation area in his city. In particular, he mentioned that the Mall of Asia and the firms within employed about 6,000 of his constituents. There was an infectious pride written on the mayor's face as he claimed that such employment of his people in Pasay was the result of an arrangement he had with the mall management. In effect, he said that thru his efforts, his constituents enjoyed preferential treatment over those coming from other places. What an executive action!

From the point of view of the presence of reclaimed land, Cebu City may be likened to Pasay City. I hate though to limit the similarity of these two cities. In the case of Pasay, its chief executive did not boast of the many business firms gearing to set their establishments up at the reclamation area. We, here in Cebu, have had a deluge of such braggadocio for quite sometime now. Mayor Trinidad did not call press conferences to announce that this and that company was probably going to put up its office there. In many occasions, we heard our city hall proclaim that foreign firms (were they Singaporean, Taiwanese and American companies?) in addition to the who's who in Philippine business were just about ready to move to the reclamation. In other words, Peewee did not pay his people lip service with a promise of abundant employment opportunities.

What he did was to make sure that his people would top the number of employees to be taken in by the companies sprouting at the reclaimed land. In the interview, he called that some kind of a special arrangement. Admitting that thousands of our country's jobless would flock to where the opportunities are, the Pasay city mayor extended his sphere of influence in a spread protective of his constituency.

Frankly, while it seems to work,  I am not comfortable with that. The system is more personal than legal. As such, the approach is not capable of equal application. There is no assurance that anyone without liaison to city hall may be given the kind of push which the "special arrangement" is supposed to bear.

A legal infrastructure, rather than "special arrangement" is what is needed in our city. There is ample constitutional theory to support an innovative effort on the part of our local legislators in coming up with an ordinance which should give to our thousands of unemployed hands the first crack at job opportunities. That charity begins at home is not an idle philosophical thought. It can be useful in pounding out from the anvil of local legislation a law which regulates business with the end in view of trying to make sure that the populace of the very local government unit which services it has enough leeway at employment.

I am sure the measure, if any, which should concretize the idea of Mayor Trinidad is rather novel. But certainly, it is not unconstitutional. The ball is now on the court of our sanggunian. However our local leaders, armed with a fresh mandate from our people, engineer this concept into working legislation shall spell our initial triumph over the surge of unemployment.

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