You want to change Cebu? Build a new city!

Call it timely that I had a taping at the Movenpick Hotel with General Manager Helmut Gaisberger yesterday when they had the launching of their up and coming Oktoberfest on Oct.29, 2011 dubbed “Rock the Night with the Bavarian Sound Express” from Germany. Mr. Gaisberger promises this to be an authentic Oktoberfest complete with great German food, sausages and sauerkraut and lots of beer in the real beer mug that they have from Munich. Indeed, since the Movenpick group took over from the Hilton Hotel, they are fast turning it around as a destination for a great culinary journey and lots of fun.

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The so-called Road Revolution espoused by my good friend Atty. Antonio Oposa has no doubt incensed the greater public about the road closures were no notices about this event was publicized. So in the end, the purpose to advocate change in our City of Cebu has virtually backfired on him. He emailed me a letter for me to join him on this, but since I was in Leyte for the weekend I begged off. I wrote that when he effects a road closure to promote his advocacy for those people who have no cars to have more in roads, he must make sure that he wins the hearts and minds of the Cebuano populace.

In a letter circulated to his supporters, Tony Oposa claims that they have achieved victory in this cause. But he doesn’t realize that the impact of this in the grassroots is negative for him. Last Monday evening, the top media personalities in Cebu were invited to a dinner in Marco Polo and from what I heard, everyone was pissed off by the Road Revolution which apparently has become somewhat of a road rage.

Tony Oposa plans to do a repeat on Oct. 23rd because he pointed out, even CITOM is with him on this. So in the end, if CITOM was with the group, then how come they could not solve the traffic mess that they created so that a few bicyclists would have a wide road to use.

I submit that while I agree with many of the advocacies of Tony Oposa, I don’t agree with his method in holding the road revolution. When I was running CITOM, I once advocated for a “Carless Day,” but the Cebu City Council shot it down. Come now, who doesn’t want wide tree-lined streets for Cebu City? But we have to dig deeper into our current way of life because whether we like it or not, we are connected by an umbilical cord to Imperial Manila and thus we cannot just fix our streets the way we like it. Like it or not, this issue is very similar to the flyover controversy.

No doubt Tony Oposa wants to change the way of life to suit his vision. But this would be at a great expense and cost in the lives of our people who need roads to go to their workplace. Mind you this also happened in Taiwan when people no longer liked the way Taipei was growing. So the national government then created a new city, Kaohsiung, our sister city, which has wider roads and parking spaces for cars and wide areas for people to walk around. If you ask me, let’s build a new Cebu City up in Balamban where you can have wide roads, bike lanes and perfect drainage. That is a much cheaper proposition than rebuilding Cebu City into that dream.

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This week the debates on the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill continues in the Senate and already two Senators who are sponsors of the RH bill have threatened to withdraw their support for this controversial measure and foremost among them is Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson who said, “If there is possibility of life after intercourse… then we should not allow anymore contraceptives that would prevent pregnancy. If the bill will allow Levonelle (a brand of morning after pill) or whatever term we will use to describe it, then I will withdraw my support even if I am the author of the bill.”

This is a very significant issue in the sense that we are talking about the author of the Senate version of the RH Bill having second thoughts about this. Could it be that our prayers have been answered? One would think that Sen. Lacson has developed a certain notoriety and have been accused of murder and yet he is showing us his concern for the unborn. The other Senator having questions that need to be answered is Senator Serge Osmeña III who pointed out clearly that the moment of fertilization is when conception starts or when the sperm cell fertilizes the egg cell.

Sen. Osmeña said, “In other words, we do not have to wait for the zygote to be implanted in the uterus in order to consider that a human life is now in existence. We could like to go back in the time when the sperm cell meets the ovum and perhaps even give it a 48-hour period, if that is possible, by recognizing that such is the moment of conception.” These are the very issues we have raised in our past columns and I’m glad that finally this debate has reached the Senate floor. What is significant here is that these questions are being asked by those who are supportive of the RH Bill… and I’m sure the Senators against the RH are quietly saying, “We told you so.”

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