Vice mayor’s hot seat

A city vice mayor has several vital functions. Aside from being the reserve mayor and the preferred officer in charge in the absence of his chief executive, the deputy mayor holds the clout-laden responsibility of presiding over the sessions of the City Council.

Political lines in Cebu City began to show clearer definition with news that Council Edgardo Labella who is on his last term in the legislature may run for vice mayor in tandem with Mayor Michael Rama in the May 2013 elections.

An eventual stab at the vice mayor’s seat would pit Labella against current party mate and Vice Mayor Joy Young. This, to skeptics, would be a competition between more of the same, considering the two’s longtime shared affiliation.

Yet the development shows in a sense a loosening of the stranglehold of the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan on City Hall and bodes well in terms of showing that passion for service need not be channeled through one institution or party alone.

But therein lies the challenge for Labella. He would need to present himself as an alternative to Young without the option of resorting to questioning the vice mayor he worked with for years. How he will do this is worth watching for.

So far, Young’s performance at the helm of the City Council has been defined by scrutiny that bordered on or crossed over into oppositionism vis-a-vis the governance initiatives of the executive branch under Rama.

That could be interpreted by the electorate as stringent stewardship or childish filibustering. Young, coming off his and his BO-PK colleagues’ successful reduction of the 2012 budget, will need to take pains to explain why city residents cannot benefit from as much of the taxes they paid as they should.

Both Young and Labella, as incumbents in the council, would also need to account for their functions as legislators. What were their accomplishments in the arena of crafting legislation? Did they behave as councilors in ways that made it easy for the executive to enforce the laws that they crafted?