Whoever said that two heads are better than one did not probably realize that no matter the present gross disparity in numbers of Cebu City’s political leadership, the one may actually be better than the two. There is His Honor, Cebu City Mayor Michael L. Rama with the obvious lonesome support of his own clansman Hon. Eduardo Rama, the councilor being arrayed against Hon. Joy Augustus Young, the vice mayor and the rest of the city councilors. In the equation, that is factually two versus eighteen if we count the votes of the sectoral representatives of the ABC president and the SK being the allies of the vice mayor.
Their numbers were pitted against each other in the last council session that decided the fate of the 2012 budget for the city. That was a battle we, Cebuanos, were entertained. When the budgetary proposal coming from the office of the mayor was brutally slashed to about half the original amount upon the votes of the whole city council, save that of Councilor Rama, we knew there was something wrong in the perception of our leaders. And so, immediately, we asked which of the two opposing sides could be right.
I dare not answer the question as asked. Rather, true to the off tangent nature of this column, let me try to dwell deeper into the framework of their contrasting positions.
At the outset, I assume that the young councilor Edu Rama, my son Byron’s buddy in high school, was not involved in the mapping of the strategy. Without meaning to cast aspersion on the depth of the youthful councilor’s political acumen, I think that the mayor must have surveyed the whole horizon without his inputs. That way he steered clear of the intangibles.
Having cleared that point, let me proceed to state that the one head of the mayor might have outsmarted the many heads of the vice mayor and company.
The mayor anticipated the move of his vice. It was a given. They would be confronting each other in every possible political scenario. Considering that the budget would be the very kettle from which the sitting chief executive would draw all funds necessary to drive his political machinery, the ruling party, of which the mayor is no longer a member, would do its best to pare to the least figure. The mayor knew that what he would include in the annual appropriations measure would be rudely stripped of substance.
So, the mayor bloated the budget in a manner that looked perfect. He announced that such and such huge amounts were intended for various projects beneficial to us, his constituents. His budgetary allocations were highlighted by an intended delivery of services unseen in years. If his fund outline were to be implemented, the present mayor’s accomplishments would multiply exponentially whatever were done by his predecessors. Indeed, the picture of dramatic achievements the mayor painted with his 2012 budget, drew the kind of envy a jealous disposition could very imagine.
True enough, the vice mayor and the councilors, acting to the beat of the political guru they owe allegiance to, butchered the budget. They would not want to give the mayor the kind of money he could use to promote his political war plans against them. No matter how they would coat their language, they could not avoid the truth that they only want to deprive the mayor of the tax money to make his administration look good.
But, what the mayor’s opponents have done was in perfect sync with what he planned. They played to his gambit not quite different to the Mid East war of the late 60s. The Egyptians were allowed to march straight across the Sinai and in the direction of Israel. But, they strayed too far that it became easy for a Moshe Dayan to disrupt their advance by breaking their supply lines. Oh, what a tragic misadventure it was! Similarly, the mayor allowed his fiends to mangle the budget and strayed far too deep into his budget. Now, he can tell us that he only desired to serve the Cebuanos by giving us the kind of high-end public service big budget can afford but his adversaries, moved by blind allegiance to a master (and who would be his contender in 2013), think otherwise. At the end of the day, the mayor, as he probably planned, might have the last laugh when a sympathetic constituency would want to wring the necks of those who prevented him from serving his people well.