No loyalty check in Rama dinner

IT wasn’t a loyalty check after all.

Still only 15 of Cebu City’s barangay captains had a swell time in a fiesta dinner sponsored by Mayor Michael Rama at the Rama compound in barangay Basak-San Nicholas last night.

The mayor invited a majority of the barangay captains in the Rama compound but known loyalists of Rep. Tomas Osmeña of Cebu City’s south district weren’t invited.

Sto Niño barangay captain Pancho Ramirez said he didn’t receive an invitation from the mayor unlike the others who got a written invitation from the mayor.

Ramirez was among those who issued a manifesto asking then mayor Osmeña not to choose Rama as the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) standard bearer in last year’s elections.

“It’s okay that’s how it is,” Ramirez told Cebu Daily News.

Felix Limotan, barangay captain of Sirao, a hinterland barangay in Cebu City, said about 10 to 15 barangay captains from the hinterland barangays went to the Rama compound.

Limotan said the mayor didn’t talk about politics, nor did he discuss his latest decision about quitting the administration BO-PK party.

The barangay captains earlier asked Osmeña whether or not to attend the party.

Some of them thought that the invitation was a loyalty check after the mayor conducted an assessment on City Hall employees.

“It was only entertainment, there was no politics. Rama didn’t talk about it,” Limotan said.

The fiesta dinner also had live band entertainment. There were no city councilors who attended the dinner, Limotan said.

Earlier Osmeña said he asked the barangay councilors to tell “Rama anything he wants to hear” from them regardless of his feud with the mayor.

He dismissed the mayor’s exit from the party and said he doesn’t need to run against him in 2013.

Rama quit the BO-PK after former Cebu City administrator Francisco Fernandez filed charges against him and two other officials in relation to the clearing operations that displaced settlers at the Mahiga Creek.

The City Council insisted that the demolition be halted until a suitable relocation site is provided for the settlers.

A temporary relocation site had been provided for the settlers which they rejected owing to the lack of toilet and power facilities.

Rama was adamant against providing assistance to the settlers as suggested by the council.Correspondent Fatrick Tabada