Lesson in Guadalupe plebiscite

If there’s anything to be said about last week’s plebiscite in barangay Guadalupe, Cebu City, it is that some initiatives which look promising in the beginning could end up disastrous if protagonists rely solely on loose political alliances.

The plebiscite held over the weekend sought to ratify Republic Act 9905 authored by former congressman Antonio Cuenco for the purpose of carving a new barangay out of sitios Banawa-Englis from barangay Guadalupe.   Cuenco filed the measure on Sept. 30, 2009. It became a full and complete law when it was signed by then president Gloria Arroyo in January 2010.

Guadalupe is a vote-rich barangay with 28,421 registered voters. Official results showed that more than 12,000 voters took part in the exercise, in which 8,107 voted no while 3,990 voted yes. I heard an observer saying the decision of the majority of Guadalupe voters to sit out the political exercise doomed the chances of ratifying R.A. 9905. If that’s the case, then the real tally of the no votes exceeded that of the Commission on Elections count.

The huge population of barangay Guadalupe has always been a challenge for city and barangay officials who are continually besieged with complaints especially from residents of sitios Banawa and Englis who claim they’re being left out in the delivery of services.

Grievances from garbage collection to the alleged refusal of then barangay captain Eugenio “Jingjing” Faelnar to distribute livelihood programs in the said sitios became very prominent in 2008 and Faelnar suffered the political fallout.

The complaint was valid, but instead of drawing out plans to address the problem with City Hall extending logistical support to Banawa and Englis, at the same time pressuring Faelnar to work harder, the aggrieved sectors opted for a more radical solution. They asked Cuenco to finalize the draft law that would reconfigure Guadalupe minus Banawa-Englis.

At the height of the controversy, then vice mayor Michael Rama talked of practical solutions, like building a satellite barangay office in the aforesaid sitios to be manned by the barangay councilor from the area. That would have gone a long way in addressing the problem, which was basically what the village folks were asking for, but under a new configuration. In my view, that cast doubts into the real agenda of some people who campaigned to split Guadalupe into two.

The suggestion looked next to impossible because it would cause the diminution of the existing barangay in terms of population and taxes. In a regular setting this cannot be achieved, but in the late ’90s when this idea was first floated, then mayor Tommy Osmeña and Cuenco were in complete political harmony and the move to split Gaudalupe looked like a done deal.

In fact, if Jingjing Faelnar had any reservations, he chose to chew them in private.  The pronouncements of Tommy and Tony coupled with an earlier council resolution had the effect of calming pro-Guadalupe split advocates, at the same time keeping the political status quo. In other words, it was a win-win solution.

The Cebu City Council passed City Ordinance 1661 authorizing the holding of a plebiscite and setting aside a budget for the said purpose in 1996, or a good 10 years before Cuenco was able to deliver on the much needed legislative act.  In sum, the timeline of R.A. 9905, which was enacted in 2009, only shows the measure’s belated importance.

Fortunately or unfortunately for opposing forces in Guadalupe, the political alliance between Tommy and Tony went sour in 2008. When Tony pushed for preparations to ratify R.A. 9905, Tommy thumbed them down saying that the move was “the right thing for the wrong reasons, because Tony was motivated only by ill will against Jingjing Faelnar.”

Tommy and Mayor Michael Rama chose to be scarce during last week’s plebiscite because, as former congressman Cuenco correctly pointed out, the two could alienate both sides if they took a stand one way or the other. But Tony had to be there, as chief architect of the highly divisive measure.  When he runs for Congress next year, he will have to work doubly hard in Guadalupe and Labangon.

The moral of the story is, when a contentious issue is propped up by a positive political climate, protagonists need to strike while the iron is hot.