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Friday, August 19, 2005
Malilong: Going directly to the plebiscite
By Frank Malilong
The Other Side
I said it before and I`ll say it again: Let’s do away with the public hearing on the bills to create three additional provinces in Cebu. Let’s abolish the committee on local government because it is wasting scarce people’s money on an exercise that serves no useful purpose. In fact, if we want to save more money, let’s abolish Congress.
Emilio Macias, the congressman from neighboring Negros Oriental who chairs the House body that is holding the public hearings, says that the job of his committee is only to determine if the requirements on area, population and income have been satisfied. That is why, he says, there is no reason to hold the hearings here.
Moreover, there is the security angle to consider, he added. Since he did not elaborate, I could only surmise that he fears us, and what we could do when we are agitated and highly emotional. And what does our record say in this respect?
Macias need not look far to find the answer. In the last public hearing held by his committee in Manila, bitter enemies Gov. Gwen Garcia and Rep. Clavel Martinez traded barbs under a highly charged atmosphere but that was it.
Reports on the confrontation did not even mention if they glowered at each other.
The point is that we may be the noisiest in conducting our quarrels but we don’t cross the line that divides civilized people from barbarians. Macias ought to know that since his island is less than an hour away by boat from the nearest point in Cebu.
If his worry is about his personal safety, he has nothing to fear. He has definitely shown bias for the bills but come on, nobody’s going to lynch him here. There will be plenty of boos, that’s for sure, but a grizzled political veteran like him should be able to handle that with aplomb.
But Macias will not come to Cebu; he already said that. And unless he quits as committee chair and allows a more daring, if fairer, colleague to take over, there is no way we will have the public hearings here. We know that the reasons that he cited are hogwash but so what?
In the same token, why should we insist on holding the public hearings here? Why should we both to let our voices be heard by Macias, et al? What the Cebuanos think about the bills matter very little, if at all, to the committee, didn’t Macias say so himself?
We will have a chance to express our sentiments about the bills, he says, but not now, not before his committee. We will have to wait until the plebiscite. Until then, what we think, feel or believe in is completely immaterial, impertinent and irrelevant.
Since it is almost a certainty that the Macias committee will favorably endorse the bills to the House, which will most likely approve them, why don’t we just drop all pretenses and go directly to the plebiscite? It’s cheaper that way.
(August 19, 2005 issue)
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