EDITORIAL - The banner ploy has backfired

It now appears that the giant "Never Again" banner in Liberal Party yellow plastered across the facade of the Cebu International Convention Center has backfired. It has boomeranged on the reelection bid of Governor Hilario Davide III instead of helping promote it, as was clearly the intention of those who put up the banner.

The plan had been simple enough. By calling attention to the CICC and how it was built at an alleged overprice, the bannermen clearly wanted to draw a line between Davide and his predecessor who built the center, the implication being that since Davide is not like his predecessor, he deserves to be reelected to another term.

The problem with simplistic plans is that they often do not take other things into consideration. In the "Never Again" CICC banner brouhaha, for instance, the bannermen obviously concluded it was enough to dig up some dirt about the CICC and all Cebuanos would promptly notice in Davide the clean difference. But simplistic expectations often do not take long to be frustrated.

For example, it was plain shortsighted to expect the spin to begin and end with the alleged overprice of the CICC. The bannermen apparently missed the glaring fact that, overpriced or not, the CICC is still government property, thereby putting Davide squarely in the middle of a huge responsibility to protect its integrity. Settling the alleged overprice is one thing, maintaining the CICC is another. Davide has nothing to do with the former, but everything to do with the latter.

Tragically, Davide apparently failed to recognize what is demanded of him as a governor beyond pointing out perceived shortcomings in others, a preoccupation that seems to run in his political party. When Capitol began telling an aroused media that it was not going to spend for the repair and rehabilitation of the CICC after it was damaged severely by two natural calamities, it brought the spotlight around on Davide.

If the alleged overprice in the cost of construction of the CICC was an issue, it is now an issue too the apparent neglect that has befallen the CICC. The problem, however, is that while the alleged overprice is still under litigation and therefore is far from being resolved, the current state of neglect of the CICC speaks for itself.

The wasteful neglect of the CICC will prove to be a far more pernicious issue for Davide than is the alleged overpricing of the CICC due to its currency and its physical availability. When a person looks at the CICC now, all that he will notice is its state of disrepair and not the picture of lavish overprice that was the original intent. The expected explosion has detonated in the faces of those she pulled the trigger.