With barely two months to go before the election, Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama wants a review of the city’s contract with Bigfoot Entertainment which leased a two-hectare lot in the South Road Properties (SRP).
It isn’t a coincidence that Rama picked on Bigfoot whose boss gifted his predecessor and rival Rep. Tomas Osmeña of Cebu City’s south district with two Dodge cars that were later subject to an investigation by the Ombudsman-Visayas, which hasn’t reeleased any results yet.
Despite Rama’s rationale that the city government needs to see whether Bigfoot produced any films in their sound studio at the SRP, Osmeña’s insinuation that the review was the mayor’s way of getting back at Bigfoot owner Michael Gliessner’s refusal to talk to him would weigh more heavily in the public’s mind.
Osmeña likes to rub it in that it was to him and not to Rama that Gliessner chose to turn over custody of the two Dodge cars, like a case of patronage envy.
The timing of a contract review naturally points to election warfare with Rama facing an uphill relection bid.
A lot is riding on his reelection especially with his pet initiatives – master plans for drainage, a revitalized Cebu City Medical Center, heritage infrastructure, that have time and again screeched to a halt on the doorstep of the City Council which consists of Osmeña’s allies.
The inquiry into the Bigfoot contract may suffer the same fate whatever the results may be.
If the City Administrator’s Office or the mayor finds something disadvantageous in the contract, the council which dances to the tune of their real leader, Osmeña, is not about to to renegotiate or cancel the Bigfoot contract.
Gleissner’s cozy relationship with the former mayor was well known, and the lease of the SRP lot was trumpted as the first major investor in the reclamation site in 2007.
The US-made Dodge cars, previously used as US police cars in Bigfoot’s movie productions, were entrusted to Osmeña as tokens of appreciation to a buddy.
A 25-year lease contract that brings in P5 million a year to the city government is much needed income. But the rationale of the SRP was to set up economic enterprises that create jobs, not to provide opportunities for land speculation.
(Osmeña defends the ‘idle’ state of the building saying Bigfoot was unable to produce films there due to the 2008 US economic recession.)
Election season or not, the Bigfoot contract should be looked into to settle any doubts about whether it was negotiated with sweetheart terms.
But that should be left to the Ombudsman to examine out as Rama’s motives will always be colored with a reelection agenda.
The SRP is too valuable a property to be traded for high-priced renters who sit on it instead of actually developing it.