Tuesday, August 10, 2004 Editorial: Osmeña-Fernandez meeting
It’s good that Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Talisay City Mayor Socrates finally talked yesterday, thus re-establishing the communication line that was cut off when the conflict between the two cities intensified recently.
While the third personality in the conflict, Rep. Eduardo Gullas, was not around, the hope is that the initial talk will arrest the downslide in the relationship between the two cities sparked by competing claims over a portion of the South Reclamation Project.
Or at least change the direction Osmeña is taking, which is to pressure Fernandez and Gullas to give up the claim by going against everything Talisay in Cebu City.
Indeed, there were already signs things will turn worse when Gerry Marquez, consultant on the urban poor of the Cebu City Government, admitted the Cebu City United Vendors Association is already listing vendors who are not from Cebu City.
Which means that more vendors who are Talisay residents will be displaced aside from those at the Pasil fish market, if Osmeña will continue with his offensive.
With the re-establishing of the communication line, however, there is no longer any reason for Cebu City to be belligerent. Unless, of course, Osmeña insists talking no longer matters at this point—a stance many Cebuanos will surely consider unfortunate.
Shooting media people
Before attributing something sinister to the spate of assaults against media people throughout the country the past couple of weeks, it would be good to look into the details of each of the incidents first.
The point is, lumping all the cases of assaults together could be misleading given the particulars of each incident.
In this sense, it would be good for law enforcement agents to heed the call for a speedy solution to each of the incidents involving media people so the public will be given the correct information on what really happened.
An example is the one involving three Bantay Radyo personnel who claimed armed men fired at them last week. Some witnesses have contradicted that claim by saying the media people were not really the ones targeted.
In this instance, it would be difficult to immediately include this case in the list of incidents that prove an ongoing assault against media people in the country.
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