Home turf

He doesn’t have the same troubles as Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama has, so it wasn’t surprising that Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes could afford to be generous when told that Cebu City Hall wanted the Mandaue City side of the Mahiga Creek cleared of settlers.

The mayor was quoted in a local daily as saying that Rama should act humble and not draw Mandaue City into his own brouhaha with the Cebu City Council over past squatter demolitions in the Mahiga Creek.

Cortes’ response that the settlers should be given relocation may not endear him to Rama but it would certainly score him points with the Cebu City Council, who has always maintained that displaced creek families should be relocated.

The Mahiga Creek problem is the latest in a slew of issues that entangled Cebu City with its neighbor Mandaue City. Cortes also had to deal with the Cebu City ban of Mandaue-based jeepneys and Mandaue’s own ban of Cebu City dump trucks—correction, all dump trucks passing by Mandaue—from passing through their area.

The Mahiga Creek problem is, however, another story, and Cortes had more than enough reason to speak his mind on the issue due to Rama’s insistence that they clear the Mandaue creekside for themselves.

Cortes’ message, behind the veil of diplomacy, is clear: Clean your own backyard first before you come screaming with shovel and bucket into mine. And Rama has a ton of problems in his backyard with an openly antagonistic council.

Since the common denominator between the two mayors happen to be the Mahiga Creek, Cebu City and Mandaue City residents may want to see for themselves what both men have done to solve the problem.

Last time we checked, a number of displaced Mahiga Creek residents on Cebu City’s side had to content themselves with tents and other facilities put up by the city to survive. In contrast, Mandaue City creek settlers are only too happy being settled in, waiting for the day when they are given a relocation site by Mandaue City Hall.

The main difference lies in alignment. Rama has made some tough decisions that alienated him from allies, decisions that don’t have adequate safety nets that could address the plight of the settlers. Like it or not, he needs to show results to city residents to demonstrate that his administration is doing something concrete.

Cortes, meanwhile, is firmly entrenched in Mandaue and could afford to take his time relocating the settlers without suffering so much in political capital. That is why Cortes is being generous to Rama in the first place.

When all is said and done, it’s their constituents who will judge in 2013 how these men acted for their welfare.