Mercado: Cups O’ Java

Saturday, October 22, 2011

HOW does a man differ from swine? In his capacity to feel shame, we learned in Ethics 101. “He that is shameless is graceless.”

Philippine Earth Justice Center’s Gloria Estenzo-Ramos did not tell Cebu City officials to quit playing hog. Instead, she wrote a firm letter to Mayor Michael Rama, Vice Mayor Joy Young and 18 councilors suggesting: Please rethink splurging P360,000 so 20 officials shed flab at glitzy Cebu Holiday Gym and Spa for a year.

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Gym workouts are a corporate perk. But Cebu is Third World, despite rhetoric to the contrary. If officials exercised by walking or biking, they’d see potholed streets and clogged canals. More important, they’d set an example.

On a bike, Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg stopped at a traffic red light in Oslo, the Guardian of Britain reported. A car drove up beside him, and the window rolled down.

“Jens,” the driver called out. "There's a little boy here who thinks it would be cool to say hello." Stoltenberg smiled and shook hands with the little boy in the passenger seat. "Hi, I'm Jens.” Imagine an obese Tomas Osmeña working bike pedals at Fuente.

Think Mahiga Creek or Guadalupe River. “The number of displaced environmental refugees is increasing,” Estenzo-Ramos added. Every taxpayer centavo is needed for essential services.

Ermita pre-schoolers, for example, are the most malnourished (13.3 percent) in the city’s 80 barangays. Ill-fed kids cluster in Alaska (11.7 percent) and Duljo (9.6 percent).

Indigents bicker when a charity ward bed becomes vacant at Cebu City Medical Center. Water taps connect less than half the homes. And squatters cram all waterways.

The backlash to gym-and-spa has been furious. “Grabe man ang public opinion gud,” Sun Star’s editorial, “Shortened Gym Deal,” quotes the level-headed Councilor Edgardo Labella.

Rama tried to leap overboard, saying: Withdraw my membership. Vice Mayor Joy Augustus Young wasn’t ready to go down by his lonesome. The mayor can’t withdraw because he approved a package contract, Young whimpered. We all sink together. Is that the idea then?

City Hall spends P50 million a year for barangay sports programs, protested Councilor Jose Daluz III. Why penny-pinch councilors? “We have a mentally draining job because we craft policies and plan the city’s future.”

Councilors are “mentally drained”? OK. Granted. Is that why they’ve embraced this gym-and-spa BS? Credit in any case Daluz for having the spine to go down with guns blazing.

Rama, Young, et al, slinked away, murmuring: We rarely work out there anyway. That is double BS. It displays, sorry to say, the shame quotient of--what?

Contrast can be a superb teacher. So stack this gym-and-spa fiasco alongside the suggestion made by Tejero Barangay Captain Jessielou Cadungog, in a letter to Councilor Margarita Osmeña.

Rama proposes an additional P2.5 million be divvied up as additional honoraria of all barangay officials. Use that instead for critically needed projects, Cadungog suggests.

Barangay officials are well-compensated with present honoraria. If funds are available, priority should be projects for most needy. “They need all the help we can give…We serve without counting any returns that we can get.”

Cadungog won’t win brownie points from his fellow barangay officials. They’ve been titillated, since January, by Rama & Co. with prospects of P5,000 add-ons. But his Ignatian point on being "man for others" is also at the core of Estenzo-Ramos’s request.

Swine, however, are not capable of selfless service.

(juanlmercado@gmail.com)