Vice mayor responds to appeal vs bickering in Soca

Monday, July 4, 2011

IT TOOK two days for Cebu City Vice Mayor Joy Augustus Young to respond to the State of the City Address (Soca) of Mayor Michael Rama because he did not want it tainted with any of his immediate feelings.

As Young simmered down, he came up with this: “He started it!”

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That was in answer to Rama’s repeated calls, during his speech, for the elected officials of Cebu City to postpone political bickering until 2013 and work united for the moment.

“I would like to remind him that he started all that. First, he left BOPK (Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan) without even so much as a whisper that he would leave us. How can you have a mayor who leaves his ship complete with his officers in the middle of the sea? That speaks volumes of his leadership,” said Young in a press conference yesterday.

Second, Young reminded Rama, it was the mayor who started firing employees associated with BOPK.

Fourteen casual employees under the Division for the Welfare of the Urban Poor (DWUP) and a consultant approached the Pagtambayayong Foundation Inc. for help after their contracts were not renewed by City Hall.

Young said BOPK will help these people find jobs.

He also warned Rama against trying to intervene in the hiring of consultants under the legislative office because under the law, Rama’s consultants will go through the Council but not the other way around.

“I’m not threatening him, but he shouldn’t start it,” warned the vice mayor.

Rama said the non-renewal of contracts was based on the evaluation of the department heads, while admitting that DWUP is due for a revamp.

This prompted Young to question the qualification of lawyer Collen Rosell as department head of DWUP, because the vice mayor thinks the lawyer does not have the heart and the aptitude to head a department that should be an ally of the poor.

As for the achievements Rama enumerated during his Soca, Young said most of those were planned and budgeted during the term of then mayor, now Rep. Tomas Osmeña (Cebu City, south district).

“But I will not take it away from him, if he feels that the project was finished during his term it’s his accomplishment already, then so be it. I was not mayor at that time so I will leave that issue for former mayor Tom to decide whether to clarify it or not,” said Young.

Achievements

He was referring to the budget appropriated for asphalting and cementing projects or the scholarship programs and aid to the barangays, among others.

There were at least five projects that Young attributed to Rama, although, not without help from the councilors.

“Managing the City from day to day is an achievement,” said Young. He also mentioned the beautification of Plaza Independencia and the Rizal Public Library, the “no segregation, no collection” policy and the clearing of Mahiga Creek’s banks.

The controversial clearing of Mahiga Creek has prompted the displaced settlers to sue Rama and other officials through former city administrator Francisco Fernandez, Pagtambayayong president.

The case was also the last straw for Rama, who then decided to leave BOPK.

Young said Rama should stop alluding to the City Council to stop bickering because the council has always been behind the mayor. In Rama’s Soca last July 1, he thanked the members of the council at least 10 times.

Rama, at one point in his hour-long Soca, thanked Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia then offered the help of the council, under Young’s leadership, on any problem with the Provincial Government.

Young said: “To the issue of 93-1, I would like to remind both the mayor and the governor that they started all this.”

He referred to a statement that Rama, who was then the vice mayor, made before the council in 2006, which prompted the Cebu Provincial Board to drop a proposed exchange of properties between the City and Capitol. Had the exchange proceeded, the City would have received lots occupied by its constituents in at least 11 barangays, while the Province would have received a commercial block in the North Reclamation Area.

“Nevertheless, the council is happy that the City and the Province are not at least on talking terms and would encourage it to continue,” Young also said yesterday.