Thursday, October 12, 2006 Espinoza: Asean summit preparation By Elias L. Espinoza Free Zone
The latest count in the vigilante-style attacks against less-known police characters or ex-convicts is 175 killed. Expect more people to fall from assassins’ bullets as the Asean summit in December nears.
The city is undergoing extensive makeup for the summit, and I suspect the current rash of vigilante-style killings is part of that effort. In fact, Cebu City Mayor Tomas R. Osmeña wants to make Cebu City a ghost town for the duration of the summit.
The mayor had berated Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Cebu City chapter president Alex Tolentino after he felt alluded to, in the lawyer’s recent statements, as the brain of the killings. Yet on one occasion he admitted having inspired the vigilante attacks.
Somebody at City Hall is perhaps of the view that putting people six feet below the ground will reduce criminal activities in the city. Instead, the 175 cases of unsolved killings may land Cebu City in the Guinness Book of World Records.
I don’t suppose delegates to the summit will be pleased to know of the number of people killed here. What will the mayor answer if they ask him why those people were hit? Will he say that they don’t have the right to live?
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Still on the summit preparation, streets in the different barangays of Mandaue City are being given a facelift. Barangay Banilad, which has A.S. Fortuna St., is one of them.
Barangay officials decorated the street with flowers placed on stands lined along the sidewalk. But this did not please LTFRB 7 Director Jingjing Osmeña, who said they obstruct people’s passage.
Barangay officials may have the best of intentions, but in their desire to make the street look good to tourists and summit delegates, they overlooked the danger of a flowerpot falling on passing pedestrians.
Jingjing has a point that Banilad officials should consider. They should shorten the stands and place them outside the sidewalk.
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Gov. Gwen Garcia’s desire to finish the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) in time for the summit must have become too much of a pressure for her to handle.
Recently, she expressed displeasure over a photograph and story on the CICC that came out in another paper and during her weekly press conference at the Capitol she did not hide her misgivings to the paper’s reporters.
As a human being, the governor showing her emotion is understandable. But as an elected official, she should not be onion skinned on matters that do not intrude into her personal life.
The CICC may be her pet project but it is still the project of the Provincial Government in collaboration with Mandaue City, the lot owner. As such, the first lady governor of Cebu should have kept her cool.
