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Friday, August 18, 2006
Signatures spell difference for Sugbuak bills
By Jeanette P. Malinao
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
Signatures, text messages, letters and phone calls will be the weapons of choice in fighting the bills to carve up Cebu Province into four separate entities.
Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia gathered town mayors and other local officials last night and asked them to get at least two million signatures from their constituents in one month to support their campaign.
Local officials were also told to put up streamers against the Sugbuak bills.
Every day in Capitol, an update will be announced on how many signatures have been gathered.
“We will come out print ads and radio and TV spots showing our violent and overwhelming objection. We do not want this to be treated as a local issue so the legislators will just pass the bills,” Garcia said.
The congressmen will be bombarded with text messages while members of the House committee on rules will be flooded with letters, calls and position papers.
The committee on rules is considered the most powerful because all bills have to pass this House body before they are presented to the plenary.
Garcia also told the 37 town mayors and Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza and other local officials gathered at the Cebu Grand Convention Center last night that they will form a new political party on Sept. 17 to protect the integrity of Cebu.
Three Cebuano congressmen were also doing their part in keeping the province intact.
While lawmakers were busy fighting over the impeachment move against President Arroyo last Tuesday and Wednesday, Cebuano congressmen were on the sidelines gathering signatures against the House committee approval of the bills to divide Cebu Province.
As a result, Rep. Antonio Cuenco said, they got at least 30 of the 77 members of the House committee on local government agreeing to sign the motion for reconsideration on approval of the bills for Cebu del Sur, Cebu del Norte and Cebu Occidental.
Cuenco (Cebu City, south) is confident this can block the committee approval from being brought to the plenary.
“We need a little more to close the door. It was not difficult to convince them. But if all committee members attended impeachment proceedings, we could have gotten more,” said Cuenco.
Aside from Cuenco, Reps. Raul del Mar (Cebu City, north) and Eduardo Gullas (Cebu, 1st district) helped gather the signatures.
The motion was filed Wednesday afternoon.
The rules of the House state that only a member who voted with the majority can ask for reconsideration, and Cuenco said they were able to convince one although he begged off from disclosing the identity.
However, a copy of the motion for reconsideration Sun.Star Cebu obtained showed that it was Rep. Jesus Crispin Remulla who reconsidered his vote for the bills.
In the motion, Remulla cited that the bills were approved by the committee with seven votes in favor, two against and four abstentions despite Cuenco’s objections.
“I realized that the objections of Cuenco appear valid and meritorious and at least deserve to be given a fair hearing by a majority of the members of the committee,” Remulla stated in the motion.
“Considering that this committee has more than 75 members, the undersigned feels that the vote of seven, including already those of the three authors of the bills, cannot be considered as fairly and truly reflective of the sentiment of the entire committee,” he said.
Remulla further said that the majority of the committee members ought to be given opportunity to participate and be heard, “in the interest of justice and democratic process.”
With the signatures they got, Cuenco told Sun.Star Cebu that the committee report approving the split-Cebu bills will no longer get to the plenary, unless those who signed will change their minds.
“But I doubt it. Their sentiments are very clear. They think that these are basically bad proposals—to chop-chop a province into four provinces. Therefore, ang ilang expectation nga ang committee report pirmahan sa majority di na mahitabo,” said Cuenco.
The committee, with only 13 members in attendance, approved the bills last Aug. 9.
Cuenco raised objections, such as the absence of a petition by any interested town or city requesting the creation of a new province as required by the Local Government Code.
He also cited the absence of a certification from the Land Management Bureau that the creation of the new provinces will not reduce the land area of the original province to less than the minimum.
Moreover, he said the Cebuanos who are affected by the division of their province must be heard through public hearings.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 18, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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