Political expediency
If Cebu City resident Bobit Avila, a fellow columnist in this paper, is getting discombobulated by the manner in which congressional districts are being made elsewhere in this country, you can bet your last insignificant centavo the residents of haphazardly configured districts are even more addled by the lack of reason and logic in the process.
Bobit talks about the incipient new congressional district of Mandaue City, whose looming departure from the Sixth district will leave the district with only the towns of Consolacion and Cordova that are many kilometers apart. The Sixth District used to be made up of Consolacion and Mandaue City on Cebu mainland and Lapu-Lapu City and Cordova on Mactan Island.
Consolacion and Mandaue City are contiguous while the latter is physically connected to Lapu-Lapu City by two bridges. Cordova lies on the far side of Mactan Island. When Lapu-Lapu City became a separate district of its own, it effectively cut off Cordova from the rest of the Sixth District.
The severance will become even more pronounced when Mandaue City becomes a district of its own. In effect, the remaining Sixth District towns of Consolacion on Cebu mainland and Cordova on Mactan Island will have the separate districts of Mandaue City and Lapu-lapu City standing between them.
But Bobit is talking only of the Sixth District. Let us not forget that Cebu's Seventh District, carved out of the Second District, now effectively stands between that district and the Third District. In effect, when you count the districts in Cebu by their numerical sequence, you would go one, two, seven, three, four, five, and six.
Why this is happening is all due to the greed of reigning congressional forces who, when their hold on power gets threatened or becomes untenable, they simply move to have their own district carved out for their own use and to their own liking. Never mind the people who go to sleep in one district and wake up to find themselves in another.
The creation of congressional districts in the Philippines has never been for the interests and needs of the people in the district. It has always been about the powerful seeking fiefdoms of their own. Supposedly, income and population are the basis in creating districts. But at the rate the peso is sinking and how fast we make babies, we will soon be a country of districts.
In the United States, population also determines districts. But there they allow logic and reason to rule. They have pegged the number of districts, or congressional seats, to just 435. Subject to a census every 10 years, states end up gaining or losing seats. There are always only 435 US congressmen, plus 100 senators, two for each state. We? A thousand seats is not far off.
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