EDITORIAL - Postponing the inevitable

A proposed ordinance has become the latest bone of contention between the Cebu City mayor and a city council where the opposition enjoys a slim majority. The proposed ordinance, principally authored by an opposition councilor, and whose approval is under threat of a veto by the mayor, seeks to impose a one-year moratorium on the eviction of people from and the demolition of homes in public lands.

More than just showcasing the pettiness of the parties involved in this latest political conflict at City Hall, the proposal underscores the shallowness to which has descended what is supposed to be the most important and influential local legislature outside the national capital. The track record of the council in recent years renders untenable the claim of Cebu City to being the Queen City of the South.

The proposal for a one-year moratorium on evictions and demolitions smacks of a cheap gimmick to win votes from the urban poor who stand to benefit from it a few short months before the next elections. Beyond its political expediency, the proposed ordinance is so worthless a measure it is not even worth the pieces of paper it is written on.

What in heaven's name will a one-year moratorium on evictions and demolitions do? If at all, all it can do is buy a little time. And then the urban poor living in public lands will face the same spectre of eviction and demolition again. But after one year, the urban poor in public lands will face a tougher fight to keep their dwellings because after one year there is no election scheduled from which some leverage might be politically squeezed.

There is nothing afoot in the city council that can guarantee a better life for the urban poor in one year when the moratorium lapses. Time can be very cruel for those who have nothing and for whom nothing is given or even promised. It will be more of the same, only that by next year, there will be no election from which votes can be parlayed for temporary relief.

A moratorium that cannot even make a decent promise for a better life is nothing but a tool for political exploitation. It is a mentally dishonest attempt at political gain. But it is concededly a brilliant maneuver meant to achieve a win-win situation for the opposition. If the mayor signs it, credit goes to the opposition who hatched it. If the mayor vetoes it, it is he who gets demonized.

A legislature worth its stature in the heirarchy of significance in this country would have come up with a measure meant to address urban poverty in a more permanent and meaningful way. But because it is more sound and fury and less in substance, all it can manage is a moratorium that really does nothing but postpone the inevitable.