Tomas says Garcia can be removed, isolated
USING the police to physically remove suspended Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia from her office at the Capitol is an option.
Cutting off electric power and water to the office, and cracking odwn on the security detail are other options, said Garcia’s chief critic Rep. Tomas Osmeña of Cebu City’s south district.
But Osmeña said Chief Supt. Marcel Garbo, Police Regional Office-7 chief and acting Gov. Agnes Magpale will have the final say on how to deal with Garcia, whom he described as a “squatter using Cebu’s resources” for her own end.
“My role there is that I help analyze the kind of political animal that the other side (Garcia) is because I have been dealing with her for a long time,” said Osmeña.
Osmeña said he talked with Garbo and visited the Capitol a few times since Magpale assumed as acting governor on Dec. 19.
He said he told Garbo that “police action should never be removed as an option.”
“Their display of tolerance should not be taken as a sign of weakness because at the end of the day she (Magpale) has to do her job,” he said.
Osmeña said it was good that it was Magpale who assumed as acting governor so that Garcia can’t project herself as a woman “being bullied by men” even if she is playing the role of an underdog hoping to win the sympathy of Cebuanos.
Osmeña said the Garcias and Vice President Jejomar Binay are making a “mockery of the law” with their arguments against the six-month suspension order issued by the President.
He said Binay and former president Joseph Estrada are riding on the publicity generated by the Capitol standoff to enhance their candidacies for 2016 and this year.
“Binay doesn’t like the Cebuanos because he lost miserably in Cebu in the last election. He does not care about the Cebuanos or (the late vice governor) Greg Sanchez or to get justice. He is just pushing himself around,” said Osmeña.
Citing 2010 election results, Osmeña said Mar Roxas got 240,311 votes as vice presidential candidate against only 91, 246 votes of Binay.
Osmeña also countered Garcia’s argument that the administrative should not have gone on because the original complainant, Sanchez, already died.
“If that’s how the law works, then all murder suspects should have been freed by now.
Sanchez’s death doesn’t exonerate the suspended governor from the offense charged against her,” Osmeña said.
Osmena said the delay in the issuance of the suspension order wasn’t the fault of President Benigno Aquino III since he has a lot of important concerns to attend to. /Chief of Reporters Doris C. Bongcac
