Excessive politics, shortage of governance

The game of politics accelerated in Cebu City with Mayor Michael Rama’s presentation Saturday of his 95 percent complete team, meaning his 2013 slate of candidates for Congress and the City Council to an organization or urban vendors.

In a meeting that had the ingredients of a miting de avance save for a call to vote, Rama introduced his election teammates to 300 members of the Cebu City United Vendors Association during their 13th bi-annual general assembly at the Cebu City Sports Center.

The presentation, sadly, is evidence that Rama has cast aside restraint and gone against his own repeated exhortations for the city’s politicos to refrain from political maneuvering and focus on delivering services to their constituents because the elections are still more than a year away.

Then again, from a pragmatic perspective, the mayor was left with no choice but to cobble together and raise the profile of a set of alternatives to leaders from the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) that he bolted last year.

BO-PK chieftain and Rep. Tomas Osmeña of Cebu City’s south district had upped the political ante recently with the launch of a pro-party radio show and a “Buy one, take one” advertising campaign promoting his partnership with incumbent Vice Mayor Joy Young. The two are expected to lead BO-PK’s campaign to retake City Hall next year.

The “Buy one, take one” advertisement was in turn a response, so the BO-PK camp says, to Mayor Rama’s own propaganda apparatus.

To recall, Rama barely warmed his City Hall seat when Congressman Osmeña began his barrage of attacks against the mayor, and it would be dishonest for the political bystander to claim that the legislator’s fiscalizing had no role in slowing down Rama’s governance moves.

The people will eventually judge whether deadlocks and friction in the city’s power corridors have done any good.

What is clear is that a substantial portion of Rama’s first year in office has been distracted by politics and his attention will also be dissipated in the coming months as an October deadline for the filing of certificates of candidacy with the Commission on Elections looms.

If this happens—and the burden of responsibility sits not only on Rama and nebulous party’s shoulders but also on Osmeña and the BO-PK’s—then political cycle 2010-2013 will end up leaving Cebu City with no tangible advancement.

We will face under the next administration the same problems that have been plaguing City Hall, the Cebu City Medical Center, the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill, the Mahiga Creek, the upland barangays surrounding Monterrazas de Cebu.

All because politicos never took the time to focus on real accomplishments in governing the city.