EDITORIAL – Another offensive from Osmeña

It seems that former Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña cannot keep his hands off the controversial portions of the South Road Properties that the city government had sold to some of the country’s huge land developers years ago.

As reported by this paper last Sunday, Osmeña was set to file yesterday graft and corruption cases against former mayor and now Vice Mayor Michael Rama and five other individuals before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas.

Lawyer Amando Virgil Ligutan, legal counsel of Osmeña, said the complaint is in relation to the city’s move to sell SRP lots to the SM-Ayala consortium and Filinvest, a move their camp claimed was highly illegal.

According to Ligutan, then mayor Rama approved on August 7, 2015 the sale of the SRP lots without authority from the City Council. In fact, the lawyer said, the council approved a resolution urging Rama not to sign the contracts two days before he signed and approved the sale.

"It is elementary in law that before a City Mayor can sign a contract, disposing of a City Property with another entity, there must be a prior approval by the Sangguniang Panlungsod," said Ligutan, "there was a resolution allowing him to sign the contracts, but there was a subsequent resolution withdrawing that authority."

Osmeña’s move came as the SM-Ayala consortium is preparing to start its development of the questioned lot from which the administration of Mayor Edgardo Labella expects to generate at least two million direct and indirect jobs.

Many see Osmeña’s move as aimed at spoiling the consortium’s multibillion-peso project now that the Court of Appeals has given the green light to its development after dismissing a petition against it for lack of merit.

Well, let us see whether or not the Ombudsman will move in favor of Osmeña’s complaint. But one thing is sure, the former mayor will never stop exploring all options in his effort to derail the development of the consortium’s project.