Dear Mr. Avila,
Re: Your Opinion entitled “A serious redistricting flaw done in Cebu” in your column Shooting Straight dated February 7, 2019. THE PHILIPPINE STAR, THE FREEMAN
First, allow me to thank you for opening up this chance for us from the Office of the Sixth District of the Province of Cebu, (Consolacion-Mandaue-Cordova) on why from the very onset of Congressman Jonas Cortes’ term as Congressman of this district, this was the very first bill he sponsored in Congress on October 2016.
I presume you know that since 1991, Mandaue City has already been eligible as a highly urbanized city to be a lone district. The 366,000-plus (2015 PSA Census) certainly deserve this long overdue emancipation from the existing Sixth District, not only for themselves but for the their neighbors in Consolacion and Cordova, whose population had to share the meager national government resource with the 10,000 people per square meter-dense Mandaue City.
Your first point on the fact that the “national government projects will now be solely focused on Mandaue, unlike before when its distributed among Mandaue, Consolacion and Cordova” has totally missed the entire point of the process of creating legislative districts. So, in order to enlighten your readers, please read carefully the next words. HB 8511 is entitled: “An act separating the City of Mandaue from the Sixth Legislative District of the Province of Cebu to Constitute the Lone Legislative District of the City of Mandaue.”
If by any chance you happen to read even just the title of the bill passed by Cong. Jonas Cortes and Senator Sonny Angara, then you would have understood the simplicity of what we are trying to accomplish here. When this bill becomes a law, Consolacion and Cordova shall remain as the Sixth District of Cebu with all the national government projects, resource and its own representative while Mandaue City shall likewise enjoy the similar privileges of a lone district. In effect, there will now be two districts when there was previously only one.
Secondly, distance has never been a hindrance in the creation of legislative districts, contiguity has never been a legal or constitutional issue. This is why the framers of the 1987 constitution placed the phrase “as far as practicable” next to the description that legislative districts are contiguous under Article VI, Section 5 par. 3 thereof. The point being that the consideration of creating legislative districts are more on the avoidance of under-representation of the people, rather than the discomfort and inconvenience of the representative.
To arrogate upon your readers that the authors of this bill in the senate and lower house did not think this properly because this law might inconvenience the future representatives of the Sixth would be tantamount to saying let’s just not eat because pooping is so inconvenient. (To be continued)
Atty. Jamaal James R. Calipayan
Chief of Staff
Sixth District of Cebu