Learn from history

I was taken aback when I heard the news that SugboTv and all its programs were yanked off the air allegedly on orders of Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale, sitting as an acting governor amid the continuing protest of the reigning governor, Gwendolyn F. Garcia.

I would have appreciated it better if the vice governor took baby steps as she tried to fit herself temporarily into the governor’s shoes, courtesy of the drama that everyone already anticipated ever since Rep. Tomas Osmeña boasted of it way back in August. (Remember, Osmeña minced no words when he said “She will be suspended in December!”) Those baby steps would have showed the grandmotherly image that she has cultivated in Cebuanos all these years. Not the aggressiveness that has taken everyone, me in particular, by surprise.

And so it has become increasingly difficult for me and for a lot of Cebuanos not to read politics into the whole set of events now unfolding in the  Capitol. Foremost of course is that fact that if there was nothing political about this suspension, then why was Osmeña quoted in the news about this very event happening some five months before it did unfold? How would he have known about this plot and so brazenly boasted about it?

We would all have expected that there would be no tectonic changes in the way the province was being governed if this was not intended to be a political act but a simple sanction. Yet, overnight the Capitol looked like it was about to be assaulted by the Imperial Japanese Army as the local minions of the Philippine National Police began setting up barricades inside   the compound.

The last time such barricades went up inside the compound was on April 10, 1942 when the Imperial Japanese Army  invaded Cebu and imposed its will on the Cebuanos through orders and memoranda coming out of the Capitol a day after. There are lessons to be learned from that painful part of our collective history that everyone may well learn from today. For one, the Japanese failed to convince the Cebuanos to love them. Secondly, their aggressive and high-handed tactics endeared them to no one in Cebu.

There are certain facts that I think the vice governor had better take notice. I shall quote profusely from here on from the Political Tidbits weblog of Belinda Olivares Cunanan last Dec. 22, 2012 titled “High drama in Cebu days before birth of the Prince of Peace…” Cunanan writes:

“But as Gov. Garcia has argued in an urgent motion before the Court of Appeals, the investigation against her filed by  Vice Governor Gregorio Sanchez Jr., was terminated last Aug. 31, 2011. But the decision to suspend her…came out only last Dec. 17, 2012– or 474 days later.

“The question she now raises is, why only now, with elections six months away, is she being suspended?

“DILG Secretary Mar Roxas opined that he is just enforcing the recommendation to the Palace of his predecessor, the late Jesse Robredo, just weeks before the latter died in a plane crash. But Gwen Garcia asserts that assuming that Robredo had made this recommendation, then it was violative of the Code which sets the 120-day deadline for dismissing an administrative case.

“Besides, as Star columnist Bobit Avila argues, “didn’t this same Jesse Robredo not give Gov. Garcia and Cebu province two plaques of appreciation for Good Housekeeping?”

There is basis to be cautious, to rein aggressiveness in, to be humble and not let the right hand strike as if things will always be.

History has many lessons about temporary victories leading to permanent losses. It is never too late to learn from the past.