Cortes seeks lone district status for Mandaue City

CEBU, Philippines - Mandaue City wants to be a lone congressional district.

Cebu sixth district Representative Jonas Cortes has filed a bill seeking to make Mandaue City a separate congressional district.

House Bill No. 4117, which Cortes filed on October 18, seeks to separate Mandaue from the current 6th legislative district of the Province of Cebu and turn the city into a new district.

This echoes the sentiment of the Mandaue City Council, which approved Resolution No. 86-2016 sponsored by Cortes' brother, Councilor Demetrio Cortes, who argued that the city is qualified to become a lone district.  

"This Bill (HB 4117) seeks to give due recognition to the development by constituting Mandaue City into a lone cong-ressional district separate and distinct from the sixth district of Cebu," Demetrio said.

As early as 1992, there was already a bill filed in Congress but several local officials have opposed it.

In 2011, then congressman and now Mayor Gabriel Luigi Quisumbing filed a bill making the city a separate congressional district.

Former congressman Efren Herrera also filed a similar bill in 2000. It was approved in the House but was opposed by then senator John Osmeña at the Senate.

If Mandaue becomes a new congressional district, the sixth district will be left with just the towns of Consolacion and Cordova, which are 14 kilometers away from each other with the cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu between them. Lapu-Lapu City, now a lone district, used to be part of the sixth district.

Under the Local Government Code, a population of only 250,000 is needed for a single representation in the Lower House, which Mandaue could already satisfy as it already has a population of more than 300,000.

Lapu-Lapu City was converted into a highly urbanized city in 2007 and it was also granted separate congressional representation by virtue of Republic Act No. 9726 approved on October 22, 2009.

The law separated the city from Cebu's sixth district to form its own congressional district starting in the 2010 elections.

Mandaue City Mayor Gabriel Luis Quisumbing welcomed the move of Cortes, his ally in the Liberal Party.

"I am for it. I am happy that the preliminary work that I did last Congress has now paved the way for this to happen," Quisumbing said in a text message to The Freeman.

Quisumbing was the sixth district congressman since 2010 before he was elected as city mayor in the May 9 elections.

Secretary Adelino Sitoy, former Cordova mayor who is now the Presidential Adviser on Legislative Affairs and the head of the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office, said he sees no legal impediment in Cortes' plan.

Mandaue becoming a lone congressional district, though, would pose a dile-mma for Consolacion and Cordova as the only ones composing the sixth district.

As of the 2015 census, Consolacion has a population of 131, 528 while Cordova has 59,712 or a total of 191,240, short of the required 250,000 minimum population of a congressional district.

Cortes, who was mayor of Mandaue City from 2007 to 2016, said the city is a thriving first class city with a population of more than 365,144 indivi-duals and is known as the "Industrial Heartland of Cebu."

About 40 percent of Cebu's export companies are found in Mandaue and, being an industrial city, it is home to some of the country's biggest companies.

Mandaue City also accounts for 75 percent of the country's total exports in the furniture sector in the past two decades, making the city the furniture capital of the country.  (FREEMAN)