Despite the abrupt change in administration at the Capitol, we don’t see any problem with a Cebu City Hall plan to rehabilitate the Fuente Osmeña Rotunda fountain.
Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama was pointed in his announcement to resume the rehabilitation that was supported by the Lhullier family with a P17 million budget commitment.
Pointed in the sense that he “warned” acting Cebu Gov. Agnes Magpale not to entangle the rehabilitation project with partisan politics which we found quite bewildering since Magpale’s demeanor alone doesn’t suggest that she would do so.
Rama’s hostility isn’t surprising since he’s on friendly terms with suspended Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia. For those unfamiliar with the local political landscape, the mayor and Garcia, who never hesitates and misses an opportunity to assert the province’s ownership claim on Fuente Osmeña, are politically aligned under the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).
Magpale’s Bakud party is allied with the Liberal Party (LP) and by extension the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) of Rama’s rival and former benefactor, Rep. Tomas Osmeña of Cebu City’s south district.
Why Rama had to insinuate politics when referring to the other side in a project that’s supposed to be apolitical and concerns every Cebu City resident like the rehabilitation of the Fuente Osmeña fountain only shows his defensive tendencies towards dealing with allies of his political foes even if those allies aren’t concerned at all with his political fortunes and are in fact dealing with problems of their own supposedly created by the mayor’s political allies.
Setting aside the ownership issue of the Fuente Osmeña Circle, we’re confident that even if they’re preoccupied with their own lives, Cebu City residents are only too willing to extend even a passing support to the rehabilitation project of the historical fountain and that, as well as their taxes are all that’s needed to push through with that initiative.
A P100,000 budget for repairs and a P17 million commitment from the Lhuillier family are on the pipeline so why the prolonged delay? Politics as the mayor suggested and the ownership dispute remain the inexorable obstacles that block its implementation.
That in itself is a microcosm of what’s continually wrong in this country and why it doesn’t rise from its sickbed to join its other, more prosperous neighbors in Asia.
And we’re not even talking about the communist insurgency and that backyard dispute over at Sabah that has the Malaysian government all chomping at the bit to end quickly with a military solution.
The Fuente Osmeña Circle does not belong to any political entity but to every Cebu City resident and to every Cebuano and they’re only too happy to have someone beautify and rehabilitate their historical sites regardless of political affiliation.