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Thursday, February 24, 2005
Wenceslao: Blame game
By Bong O. Wenceslao
There’s an old saying about the blame game: point an accusing finger at someone and three other fingers in your hand will be pointing back at you.
This is applicable to City Government officials who are deflecting the blame for the financial woes City Hall is in as it starts paying the principal of the South Reclamation Project (SRP) loan.
The point is, it would not have come down to this. Had City Hall top guns been more levelheaded, lots in the SRP would have already been titled and the 16 investors that Mayor Tomas Osmeña boasted are ready to come in would already have started setting up their establishments in that area. But things were evidently mishandled.
The SRP is not the mayor’s playground. It is an investment that will be paid by all Cebu City residents in the next several years. Thus, Cebuanos have as much a stake there as City Hall officials. Had these officials wanted to protect public interest, they would have held back their ego, toned down the belligerence and turned to consensus building.
Here’s a case in point. The mayor has been blaming Talisay City for the City’s failure to title the SRP lots. This is partly true because Talisay’s insistence that the SRP encroached on its territory poses problems to the titling process. But that is only one side of the coin. The flipside was the mayor’s reaction, which heated up the situation.
A better leader would have approached the problem in a levelheaded manner. But Osmeña being Osmeña, he instead waged a one-sided (Talisay has been holding its punches) war of insults, treating the neighboring city like an enemy. In short, the mayor transformed this into an ego thing instead of placing selfish ends below public interest.
The Cebu City mayor could just have sent emissaries to Rep. Eduardo Gullas, who, as then Talisay mayor, staked the claim over portion of the SRP, to smoothen things out. He did not do that. Gullas’ successor, Soc Fernandez, a gentle soul, visited Osmeña at the Cebu City Hall to open communication lines. He was not given importance.
I mean, Mayor Osmeña can rave and rant against all the others, blaming them for the financial burden the city has to bear because of the SRP loan.
But until he changes his leadership style from one that is dictatorial and egotistical to one that is democratic and statesmanlike, the raving and ranting will only serve to deepen the hole we are now in.
TEXTREAX. From an unidentified texter: “I recently registered my car. I asked somebody to do it because I was too busy then. I wondered why they didn’t ask me to bring my car but merely asked me to pay P3,500. What about the emission test, I asked. No problem, the fixer said. So, there.”
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ 0927-2055064)
(February 24, 2005 issue)
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