‘Rep. Quisumbing will re-file bill’

REP. Luigi Quisumbing (Cebu sixth district) will re-file the bill to make Mandaue City as a lone congressional district of Cebu.

Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes said yesterday that Quisumbing agreed to file the bill in Congress after he and the representative met two weeks ago in neutral ground.

Cortes didn’t elaborate on where they met.

Former congressman Efren Herrera filed the bill to make the city a lone district in 2000. It was approved in the House but was opposed by then senator John Osmeña at the Senate, said a Mandaue City Council resolution last April.

Cortes said that Quisumbing agreed to file the bill but he had yet to consult the One Cebu team about the Mandaue City government’s proposal.

“We discussed our concerns. But he requested that he would first talk to his One Cebu group and hopefully they would see the wisdom that we have waited for,” Mayor Cortes said in Cebuano.

Cortes said he would just wait when Quisumbing would re-file the bill.

“I really don’t want to impose (referring to time frame) on Luigi because who am I to impose on him. We will just wait that he would give it a chance. Anyway,  Congress is still on recess time. We’ll just give him time to talk to his allies in the province,” Cortes said in Cebuano.

He also pointed out that it was the Provincial Board who started the issue of having Mandaue City as a lone district.

He said that it was the Provincial Board who filed a resolution requesting the Congressman to re-file the bill.

Cortes said Quisumbing cited the legal impediments with regards to the two towns of Consolacion and Mandaue that would be left out if the bill would be approved.

Cortes told Quisumbing that the legal issues should be tackled in the court.

He said the bid to become a lone congressional district wasn’t about politics but about projects that would come to the city through the pork barrel.

He said he could just imagine how many more classrooms that would be built and the kilometers of roads that would be cemented.

He also said that most of all Mandaue City would have a voice in Congress. /Reporter Jucell Marie P. Cuyos