As Osmeña and Rama tussle the city suffers

A new skirmish has erupted between Mayor Michael Rama and Congressman Tomas Osmeña, this time about the former’s call for assistance to fund much needed city projects. Rama’s call is premised on the fact that the current city problems are a left-over from his predecessor’s watch therefore the latter should help.

The Congressman’s response was of course a big no. This is but expected not only because the mayor is no longer with BOPK but also because he has become a nemesis to Osmeña. The exchange of words between these two, as ventilated in the media, has been a no-holds- barred affair. Barbed, spiced with insults, this characterizes their ongoing war of words. Pride has been pricked, reputations soiled.

We Cebuanos for sure do not deserve to be held hostage to this conflict. Services are paralyzed. Critical projects stymied. And this Queen City of the South, the hub of commerce, the center of education and culture in this part of the country, is fast deteriorating into an unpleasant place to live in.

Motor through its road and savor the bumps and shakes from potholes and peeled off surfaces. At peak hours, get a treat to bumper to bumper chaos and count your lucky star if those daredevil drivers don’t side-sweep your car. Once there was mention of an “asphalt storm”, but a number of storms have come and gone, but where’s the asphalt?

Is the city really bankrupt? Osmeña said so, perhaps, with a naughty smile. But among us city dwellers the situation isn’t amusing. Come a little rain and streets got flooded, which means stalled vehicles, which means traffic jams, which means getting home late.

Flood of course is nature’s way of getting even with people for their wanton disregard of the ecology. For clogging waterways with debris, for choking esteros with squatters’ shanties, for keeping an antiquated drainage system, are we surprised if most of the city becomes a water world even during an ordinary rain? Where’s the government? Is the unspoken question as people wade through flood and mud. They don’t get mad because Cebuanos are a patient people. But as they suffer, how they wish that Cebu City leaders can get their acts together!

For a united leadership, no problem is too difficult to solve, but for a fragmented one, no problem can be solved.

On the matter of fund shortage, for example, why, the city can easily secure loans from banks. But in light of a hostile city council how can the mayor secure authority for such loan? The mayor retorted to Osmeña’s claim that the city is bankrupt by saying it has still real estates to sell. Of course, Rama knows selling city property is easier said than done. Cash flow could be a real problem in the succeeding months if a remedy can’t be found soon.

One casualty would be the city’s 8, 000 scholars. If money for their tuition is not on hand, what school would enroll them come the second semester? Another casualty are the thousands of senior citizens who are looking forward to their cash gift come December.

Undeniably the more painful fallout would be the phase down of basic services in such areas as health, environmental control, crime control, sanitations, cultural activities, disaster mitigation, and others.

And when these happen to whom would accusing fingers point? To both Rama and Osemeña, no doubt. But since Rama is right now the “bastonero” more fingers would be towards him. Rather unfair. But this is the way things happen in LGU’s. The rank and file are seldom analytical. Whoever sits in the power center gets the flaks, and that’s that.

This ongoing tussle between Rama and Osmeña is not new in the Cebu political scene. In the past decades ruling families have clawed one another in the contest for city hall control. Unfortunate, really. But Cebuanos can’t think of other people to run this city.

So who are to blame?