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Sunday, April 04, 2004
Guv bets pledge health, jobs
By KAREN M. FLORES
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
THREE gubernatorial candidates, considered the frontrunners in this year’s elections, met for the first time yesterday and questioned each other’s proposed platforms of government.
Lakas’ Gwendolyn Gar-cia, Independent Masa’s Celestino “Junie” Martinez Jr. and Vice Gov. John Gregory Osmeña of the Nationalist People’s Coalition took the opportunity of the forum organized by the Cebu Federation of Beat Journalists to question each other’s performance in public service so far.
A fourth candidate, Rafael Cezar Jr., a businessman from Consolacion town who is running as an independent, did not bother to ask questions as he said Cebuanos would already know what his more popular opponents have been up to.
“Di na lang ko mangutana kay ang mga tao ra’y nahibaw sa ilang mga buhat,” he said each time Regional Trial Court Judge Gabriel Ingles, who served as forum moderator, called on him for his interpolation.
Cezar, who arrived with the most number of people in his entourage among the four gubernatorial candidates yesterday, provided the light moments in the gathering.
He made both his fellow candidates and members of the audience laugh with his candid replies to the questions.
Based on lots drawn, Osmeña was the first to speak.
He presented a three-year-plan to upgrade district hospitals, improve education and strengthen cooperatives to provide livelihood opportunities.
Garcia, who was given the first chance at interpolating Osmeña, asked him if his use of his discretionary funds as vice governor during the last three years reflected the priorities he outlined in his platform.
Since Osmeña emphasized education, Garcia also grabbed the chance to ask him about an “ambitious” computerization program called “Touch Young Minds” that would have been implemented by a bogus non-government organization, Perdido Lex Foundation Inc.
Osmeña, together with Provincial Board Member Victor Maambong and Wilfredo Mulla, the vice governor’s chief of staff, now face a criminal investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas for their alleged role in the Capitol’s loss of P4.1 million to Perdido Lex.
Osmeña had given almost P5 million of his discretionary funds to Perdido for the program. Earlier, he also admitted instructing his staff to assist Perdido representatives in the paperwork.
But when he answered Garcia, he turned the tables around and said the Office of the Governor, to which Garcia served as her father’s consultant since 2001, “would know better” because it is the “approving authority” in the release of the checks.
“All I did was recommend,” Osmeña said.
Next to speak was Martinez, who emphasized a “consultative” brand of governance where most decisions and powers are “devolved” to mayors and where development programs originate from the barangays.
Osmeña commented that this style offers “no provincially initiated program” and that the Capitol seems to be reduced to the “dispersal of limited resources.”
Martinez answered by saying it is important to listen to barangays because they have been neglected for so long.
For her part, Garcia said she is “running on a platform of continuity and innovation.”
She said she will continue the programs her father, Gov. Pablo Garcia, started and improve on certain aspects.
Garcia promised to upgrade equipment of district hospitals and improve facilities, using as basis in setting priorities the occupancy rate of each hospital. This ranges from 50 percent to some 150 percent.
It was on health that Osmeña and Martinez raised their questions.
The atmosphere was particularly tense when Osmeña questioned the Garcia administration’s performance in providing health services.
While Capitol spent a total of P221 million for this last year, only P23 million, or a little over 10 percent, was spent on drugs, the vice governor pointed out.
“Aren’t medicines a key component in this?” Osmeña asked.
Garcia said this is because the amount was all the chiefs of hospitals had asked for.
Because of the need for more medicines, the administration has set up an emergency fund for this purpose and has taught hospital chiefs a system to anticipate the demand for additional supplies, she said.
Meanwhile, Martinez pointed out that the system of procuring medicines is too centralized. It should be “devolved” to hospital chiefs because they would know better.
Garcia agreed by saying it is a “big burden on the province that the procurement is very centralized.”
(April 4, 2004 issue)
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