Cebu City has removed the last of more than 600 lampposts that were used to decorate streets during the 12th Asean Summit in 2007. There was apparently no regret in removing them. They have outlived their usefulness. And they reminded of shameful controversy.
At the same time, Cebu City is taking inventory of all skywalks, with a mind to also remove those that have not measured up in usefulness. It is a way of also mitigating controversy of a different kind.
The Asean lampposts unwittingly became glaring beacons of corruption amid allegations they were overpriced by as much as 15 times their actual prices. Worse, the axe eventually fell on a few skinny necks that did not belong to the real principals.
With so much shame attached to their structures, the lampposts became derelicts to their own purpose and almost nobody gave a damn when the eventual vandals started taking keen interest in them. The embodiments of sin know no cheering gallery.
Thus nobody mourns their removal, whether through courtesy of vandalism or by official fiat. Just get them out of the way and out of sight, that perchance they will be out of mind to hound with their ignominious presence. Be gone, you pests.
The skywalk inventory is an entirely different animal altogether. While controversy did hound when the first skywalk rose, this did not rise to the level of shrillness than when vested interests saw the opportunity and took over.
At the outset, the controversy involved facility versus aesthetics. skywalks were ugly for sure. They marred the view. But they served a purpose, a purpose far greater than any lily in the field can serve. It was one of those times when beauty took the backseat.
But then came the skywalks whose proposed locations could strategically ruin businesses and valuable properties, wound haughty prides, or ruffle religious feathers. Suddently everything remotely associated with catastrophic environmental disasters became skywalk synonymous.
So well-funded and divinely compelling was the nonsense that politics cannot but be drawn over as an active participant. Mayor, mayor on the wall, who is the fairest of them all. But of course not the ugly skywalk. Down she must go, along with reason.