ACTING Mayor Mike Rama and councilors sallied forth Friday from the air-conditioned comfort of their plush P138-million legislative offices. They conducted a “surprise visit” of the run-down Cebu City Medical Center.

Everybody was, well, “surprised,” Sun.Star Cebu’s Linette Ramos reported. Hospital staffers, patients, relatives, even istambays, were flabbergasted to see “their honors” stride in – as cameras rolled. “Life is a perpetual surprise,” the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore once wrote.

But the biggest surprise, in the unscheduled Friday tour, was the officials’ overdue discovery: CCMC has been utterly neglected over the years.” No kidding? And all this time your Honors really didn’t know?

“It’s in a state of utter neglect,” Acting Vice Mayor Hilario Davide III insisted. “We all saw nga hugaw gyud kayo ang CCMC. (It’s really dirty.) It needs our attention and must be cleaned.

During their walk-through, the councilors “chanced upon two two-day old infants supposed to be in incubators,” Ms. Ramos dutifully reported. The two, however, were just left in the corridor. “There was no space for them in pediatrics ward.”

That’s a 2009 rendering of what the Syrian physician Luke wrote in 70 A.D. Walay luna alang nila sa abtanan. (“There was no room for them in the inn.”) Or was it that just a holiday hangover reaction? This Christmas Day, we found 39 kids crammed into 21 CCMC beds. That same situation prevailed in Christmas 2007 and before that as well, we wrote in the column “Myrrh In Pediatric Ward.”

The officials lamented lack of space, disorder and poor sanitation, the Sun.Star report adds. They want the morgue, now parked beside pediatric, shifted to an isolated part of the hospital. Old records should be dumped. “Do this. Do that.”

Those are snappy soundbytes for next day’s headlines. But where’s the beef? Over what the councilors dub “years of utter neglect” for this hospital, they’ve funneled resources into projects of lesser priority: their offices, handguns, basketball courts, etc. No one whimpered when Mayor Tomas Osmeña cornered 25 centavos out of every tax peso. That amortizes reclamation yen loans.

The councilors demand a change of mindset: The sick and the poor, they correctly say, should have priority. They question why CCMC conference rooms and offices are air-conditioned while patients swelter. “Nganong ing-ana man?” Davide asked.

Shouldn’t our councilors ask the same question of themselves? Doesn’t their right to oversize cushioned swivel chairs end where the right of a slum kid to antibiotics begin?

It is late in the day. Still, Cebuanos appreciate that councilors finally stripped themselves of blinders and see, for themselves, the mess that has long festered: hospital, schools, roads, water shortages, crime, etc.

For years, councilors coasted along comfortable with blinders that Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s autocratic rule imposed. If Osmeña saw fit to deny resources to CCMC, or sell it, councilors chorused amen. They saw the world as Osmeña allowed them to see it. “Sa lungsod sa mga buta, ang pikat maoy hari,” the Cebuano proverb says. “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed is king.”

Now, Mayor Osmeña is battling cancer. And all pray he’ll win this crucial battle. And in his absence, once-cowed councilors have dared to see for themselves – and were stunned.

Rama has designated Davide and Councilor Gerardo Carillo to assist Consultant Francisco Japson cobble ways to help. But success ultimately depends on whether these blinders have been cast away for good and the councilors start to work by reality. Surprise us.

(juanlmercado@gmail.com)