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Thursday, March 10, 2005
240 hectars ‘freed’ for Cebu City
By Gingging Aledo-Campaña Sun.Star Staff Reporter
With Liberty A. Pinili
Talisay is willing to stay out of the way while Cebu City applies for a special patent for the South Reclamation Project (SRP), Rep. Eduardo Gullas said yesterday.
He set one condition, though: that Cebu City must apply only for the uncontested portion of the 295-hectare SRP, such as 240 hectares, and leave the court to decide who owns the rest.
This way, Gullas said, Cebu City can have the 240 hectares titled and ease some of its difficulty in paying for the SRP loan, which has reached over P6 billion.
“Why don’t they apply for the uncontested portion? Talisay won’t protest,” said Gullas.
But he also stressed, “I never abandoned my claim for Talisay. I categorically, vehemently but respectfully deny that. If I’m not interested, I would not be doing the things I’m doing in Manila.”
If Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s previous statements are any indication, the compromise has a slim to nil chance of pushing through.
Although there’s already a draft presidential proclamation authorizing Environment Secretary Michael Defensor to issue a special patent on the SRP to Cebu City, the agency is still studying Talisay’s claim.
Not final
“Hindi pa final yon (draft proclamation),” Defensor said in an interview following President Arroyo’s press conference at the Cebu Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office yesterday.
He said that lawyers of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) are still trying to determine how to resolve the conflicting claims of the City Governments of Talisay and Cebu, a conflict that involves “two basic issues: jurisdiction and ownership.”
“Pinabilis ko rin yan,” Defensor said. (I ordered an expeditious study.) He assured, though, that whatever the outcome of the study, it will not be “whimsical” or influenced by politics.
Defensor said the DENR legal staff has to consider several technical and legal issues pertaining to the conflict.
“We also have to consider the implications on the loan payments,” he said.
Had Cebu City Councilor Gabriel Leyson not told Gullas that Talisay City can reclaim a portion of the SRP, Gullas, who was then Talisay City mayor, would have kept silent about the project.
Inside info
“It was Councilor Leyson who told me. He drove me in his car to the SRP and showed me that portion of the project that has encroached on Talisay City,” Gullas told a news conference yesterday afternoon in his office at the University of the Visayas.
Gullas said that Leyson, a cousin on his father’s side, talked about the “encroachment” during Gullas’ first six months as Talisay City mayor in 2001.
Leyson, in a separate interview, confirmed that he indeed accompanied Gullas to that portion after the bridge of the Cebu South Coastal Road on the Talisay side at that time.
Leyson said he had told Gullas then that Talisay City could claim 30 hectares of the entire 330-hectare SRP (the area under the original plan), not the 295 hectares recently proclaimed as a special economic zone.
But it may have a hard time doing that because it has no documentary evidence to support its claim. The Metro Cebu Development Project, which used to manage the construction of the SRP and coastal road, has since been abolished, he added.
“I told him that they can ask the Department of Public Works and Highways to enter into a separate agreement because that portion I was referring to is on the Talisay side, not Cebu City. He can reclaim that portion on the left side after the bridge facing Talisay,” Leyson told Sun.Star last night.
Consult us
Gullas called for a news conference yesterday to correct news reports that he has “softened his stand on Talisay’s claim over a portion of the SRP.”
“Some people have been asking if I don’t feel guilty about my claim over the SRP because it is blocking Cebu City’s application for special patent, and as a result Cebu City is now having a hard time paying for its foreign debt,” Gullas said in his press conference.
“(But) I told them that when Cebu City entered into a loan, Talisay was not a part of the agreement. They did not consult us,” he added.
Gullas, who was Cebu governor from 1976 to 1986, had experienced having to pay back for a dollar-denominated loan left by his predecessors at the Capitol.
The interest rates reached as much as 40 percent when the peso started to weaken, he recalled.
“I called for the treasurer and other officials and then gathered all the money and invested it in the market and that eventually earned just enough to pay back the loans. When I stepped down as governor, I never left any unpaid debt. I even left some P41 million in the province’s coffers,” he said.
(March 10, 2005 issue)
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