Comment on the article of Mr. Bobit S. Avila

(Continued from previous article)

That is why I am very curious what book it is you are referring to when you say “in my book” because the real legislative joke would not be the distance between component towns of a district but the deprivation of the people of real and effective representation. That is the real joke, one that you probably won’t get given your narrow understanding of legislative representation. And yes, of course you are free to hope that the President won’t be made to sign this bill into law, that is if your real motivation is to obstruct development in the component towns of the Sixth District, who by the way have all expressed their support of HB 8511. (Please see Municipality of Cordova - SB Resolution No. 186-14 Series of 2017, Municipality of Consolacion - SB Resolution No. 100 Series of 2017, Mandaue City SP Resolution 14-624-2016 and Province of Cebu SP Resolution No. 1442-2017)

To compare the Sixth District to Cebu City, which has not increased its two districts since the EDSA Revolution is like telling your neighbors not to build more rooms in his house because you decided not to add rooms to your own house for 33 years despite the fact that your household population has increased. Whatever the district representation in Cebu City is, it has no direct-relation to how Mandaue deserves its own district.

By the way, the 1987 Constitution provides that one province should have at least one district, thus Siquijor, being an island province deserves at least one district, Guadalupe on the other hand is only a barangay, so there will never be a lone district of Guadalupe. There may be a third or fourth district for Cebu City, but it is not up to Senator Sonny Angara but to the Representatives of Cebu City to make the first move.

Mr. Avila, I am surprised why you wrote this commentary on a matter which you are quite ignorant about. For your information, this bill originated in the Lower House, as do most bills of local district application. This bill was not authored out of the blue by Senator Sonny Angara, but was sponsored by him in the Senate as a counterpart bill for what has already been passed in the Lower House, as authored by Cong. Jonas Cortes. Senator Sonny Angara is the Senate Committee Chairman on Local Government, during the Senate hearing on the bill, representatives from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) expressed no objection on the passage of such bill. The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) likewise sent their concurrence. So, my question is, is this a habit of yours to comment on matters that you barely know about, or is it just for this particular issue, if so, why?

I guess the real serious flaw that we need to talk about here is not about redistricting, because clearly there is none, only a creation of a lone district, separating it from an already existing one, the real flaw would probably be why a veteran journalist like yourself would try to humiliate himself in public by talking about something he barely knows about.

Atty. Jamaal James R. Calipayan

Chief of Staff

Sixth District of Cebu