Mercado: Sitting ducks

Saturday, January 7, 2012

SUPPOSE Typhoon Sendong didn’t swerve at the last minute,” a friend from Jakarta emailed. “Assume it barreled thru as Pagasa first forecast. The storm would have smashed Cebu instead of northern Mindanao. What would be the results?”

He answered his own question. “Cebu’s deforested hills couldn’t absorb the first cloudbursts. Cascading water would have swamped, within minutes, a drainage system clogged by years of neglect.”

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Coddled by official tolerance, squatter colonies on banks of waterways would have been swept to their deaths. And slum dwellers as well. Schools and businesses would be paralyzed.

At that time, Mayor Mike Rama and a city council, which stamp-pads Rep. Tomas Osmeña’s whims, bickered over budget cuts. Slashed were funds for drainage and a dilapidated fire department. Four of 10 obsolete fire trucks conked out while tamping down a Gaisano mall blaze.

“In nine years, (Osmeña) presided over City Hall like a monarch,” our Jakarta correspondent added. “None of his controversial policies was ever questioned by the city council, where his allies dominate. Cases filed by opposition figures have not resulted in even a single indictment.

“When he reached the constitutional limit of nine years as mayor, he ran for (Congress) and won. The city council was packed with (Osmeña) loyalists, sometimes preventing the new mayor from implementing his agenda because every measure was referred back to (him).”

“Wait. Isn’t that lifted from the Jan. 2 Inquirer?” we inquired. “That front page report described institutional paralysis in Cagayan de Oro, and how it made sitting ducks of residents during Sendong.”

“Precisely my point,” he replied. “Unless we break out of the policy stalemate foisted on us by politicians, we Cebuanos are sitting ducks, just as Cagayan de Oro victims, were.”

How does one break free from this sterile political rivalry? It holds hostage the lives of our grandchildren and welfare of every Cebuano. The record shows that even life-threatening illness cannot do it.

In 2002, Osmeña collapsed and was rushed to intensive care. A team of specialists, waiting for another patient, had assembled by happenstance. (“Providence,” others say). It was a close call. Osmeña flew to the US for cancer surgery in 2009. He’s now back on his feet. We share the gratitude of his family and supporters for renewed lease on life.

“The angel of death has many eyes,” an old Yiddish saying says. All of us must look into those eyes one day.

“The threat of mortality that hangs over us sterilizes everything,” Albert Camus once wrote. Were Cebuanos naïve to hope that those brushes with our common mortality produced a more compassionate mayor?

“Tomas is ruthless,” Osmeña’s younger sister Georgia told Sun.Star’s Bzzzzz columnist. But is Mayor Mike Rama any better?

Many Cebuanos expected then Vice Mayor Rama to outgrow being a willing doormat for Osmeña. As city chief executive, they expect Rama to rise above personal affronts. More important, he’d look beyond the next elections, act on the basis of vision and values.

Will Rama, in short, mould his career after that of President Sergio Osmeña Sr.? Even with those he differed with, “Don Sergio” acted as a gentleman along the classic definition by John Henry Newman.

Surely, Tomas Osmeña shares with his illustrious grandfather more than just the family name. “Even brainless children boast of their ancestors,” a Chinese proverb says.