The Mandaue City codes, a push for excellence in governance

On Tuesday, I shall deliver to the City of Mandaue a draft code. This is the sixth draft and in our contract, the last one to do. It is entitled the Code of Health and Sanitation. We have been working on this codification project for about a year already. But, that is telling the end part of the story already. Let me slow down a bit.

One morning, more than four years ago, the honorable Mandaue City Mayor Jonas C. Cortes had me ushered into his office. He bore a facial expression that was difficult for me to fathom despite the fact that we had a warm and friendly handshake for an introduction. The furrows on his forehead indicated to me that he had some problems. Yet, the glitter of his eyes showed that he might just have the solutions to his problems. I was very attentive to every word he spoke hoping that I could be a part of the remedies to whatever bugged him.

To start the ball rolling, so to speak, I recalled that, for the shortest of times, I had his father as my teacher in Logic, many, many years ago. It was a brief period because, after two weeks of listening to the initial lectures, our class was split and I went to the other teacher.

Perhaps, my ice-breaker succeeded because Mayor Cortes began to open up his mind as he shared with me something that turned out to be a profound vision. According to him, he saw a great model of a government leader in his father that prodded his to perform doubly hard. The late Demetrio Cortes, a former mayor himself, tirelessly worked on many innovative programs to make the city grow. And he, the father, had a plus on his side. His father, the mayor, was a lawyer and in all the things he did for the city, there was to be a legal document to serve as basis.

In our conversation, Mayor Jonas, to distinguish him from his former mayor-father, dreamed also of leaving a lasting legacy to his people. To him, the best gift he can give his constituency is a legal infrastructure of sort. He realized that since Mandaue became a city, four decades ago, there have been hundreds of ordinances passed by the city's very active councils. Researching for one under a given topic entails a tremendous effort. What makes the task enormous is understanding whether there are other ordinances on the same topic that should be considered.

The solution Mayor Jonas thought was to codify his city's ordinances. It was his concept that the hundreds of such local laws could probably be reduced into few codes. Rather than scour the entire library for the kind of ordinance a Mandaue City citizen wants to know, he needs only to pick up the code that contains the topic he has in his mind. With the process being shortened a lot, everybody who would want to know the kind of ordinances that govern the city would find the effort rewarding.

I then began to understand Mayor Jonas. His direction was most laudable although, as I also warned him, the load was heavy.  Still, he was relentless. The prosperity of the city, any city for that matter, must have its solid anchor on easily discernible laws. And he was prepared to undertake the task. Of course, a code, or few codes, the ones Mayor Jonas had in mind hits the nail on its proverbial head.

We all know that a code is a collection of laws of the same kind, a body of legal provisions referring to a particular branch of law. That was what Mayor Jonas asked of me to help. In the mind of the mayor, it was not even a question of possibility. The codes have to be drafted and when passed by the council, the codes will make it easier for leaders to come to govern the city.

To accomplish that project, Mayor Jonas asked the support of a cooperative city council. The honorable Vice Mayor Glenn Bercede has seen the advantages of having the codes written and through his, and the city councilors' push, the drafts will be on the table of the sanggunian this Tuesday. They will be a milestone in the city's quest for excellence in governance.