How can Cebu City become like Singapore?

The ambition to make Cebu City attain economic growth approximating Singapore is as high as the song "Kapantay ay Langit". The realities on the ground are as low as the other song "Bato sa Buhangin". Mayor Mike Rama's vision is not impossible but the question is: Are Cebuanos ready for it? If not, then the mayor will end up like Don Quixote, who was fighting windmills that obstructed the fulfillment of his dreams.

Of course, it is not bad to dream. Every politician is a dreamer. Every leader needs to create a vision. But he cannot just begin to execute it when the people do not even understand his grandiose strategic plan. Rome was not built in a day. Singapore took many decades for Lee Kuan Yew to build it and for his son to continue the legacy. But Singapore has something that Cebu does not have. Singapore has disciplined and law-abiding people, citizens who shared Lee’s vision, a city state with one billionaire for every three families, with the highest-paid public officials in the world, almost zero corruption, and with hard-working, silently obedient people who trust and respect the government. Cebu has plenty of growing to do. We have a long way to go.

We need a leader like Mike Rama with a pure heart and a passionate sense of urgency. He wants change immediately and unconditionally. Well, if he remembers his HR skills, he needs an OD expert, one who is competent in human psychology, communication skills, and human relations. He should get a team of young professionals who share his vision and translate this into a concrete road map with specific milestone targets and definite timetables. He needs a propagandist, a prolific and powerful writer who shall translate his aspiration into operational and understandable action steps. He needs a PR person who shall make the people buy in his vision. He cannot make Cebu City like Singapore if the Cebuanos don't understand the whys and wherefores.

He should overhaul and reshuffle bureaucrats around him. How can he fly like an eagle if he is surrounded by ducklings (with apologies, this is only a figure of speech). What I am trying to say is that the first people who should believe in his vision is his inner circle. That is what Jesus did. He first convinced them and changed their perspectives and paradigms. He taught them, mentored them for skills, counseled them for attitudes and habits and coached them for leadership skills. Rama has too many things to do and doesn’t have the time or the right people to do it. I don’t want him to end up being a frustrated man.

Rama should surround himself with technocrats with political skills not politicians without technical aptitude. The way I look at it, the people around him, except for a very few, are lukewarm, half-hearted, non-committal and lacking in passion and enthusiasm. Even some members of the council are silently resisting the changes. His own relatives and loved ones seem to misunderstand him. But I do understand this man. He has a pure heart and the noblest intentions. He is a man in a hurry. He wants immediate change but many people are putting roadblocks to his journey to make this city like Singapore: progressive, clean, environment-friendly, with a 100% employment rate, with citizens paying taxes willingly and obeying laws wholeheartedly.

A journey to Singapore is a long voyage, a thousand miles, more or less. We have a leader whose passion is as high as the clouds in the sky. But it seems to me that the people are still too fixated on the rocks of ineptitude and indifference. Resistance to change is solid like the rock of Gibraltar while the dreams of Rama are soaring like eagles of Mount Apo. I am helping him for a huge salary of ?1 a year. I think there is a way to achieve his dream if he stops listening to vested interests who keep poisoning his mind and who never cease to put obstacles to the attainment of his vision. The first thing he should do is to choose the right disciples and purge his core group of Judases and Thomases, traitors and non-believers.

But this is a very dangerous thing. He can lose his next election if he doesn’t know how to navigate his ways along perilous waters. But he has a chance to become our version of Lee Kuan Yew. I can be wrong, of course, but I can also be right.