Wednesday, October 18, 2006 Tomas dodges doesn’t want conflict with Gwen, prefers SC ruling By Linette C. Ramos Sun.Star Staff Reporter
ALTHOUGH he is not planning to bring the matter to the court yet, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña will let the Supreme Court have the last say on who the rightful appointing authority is at the Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) board.
Without any legal action at this time, Osmeña proposed two “political solutions” to avoid any feud with Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia.
The mayor does not want to upset the Capitol while the proposed land swapping deal remains hanging.
In a news conference yesterday, Osmeña said he hopes their conflicting views on the issue will not result in a misunderstanding between him and the governor.
He said the matter is best left to the court, but it does not mean that he will file any legal action concerning it.
“It should be settled by the court because there will be a major complication if the court considers the appointments illegal, then all actions of the board and their resolutions will be considered illegal,” Osmeña said.
He admitted he is calm when dealing with the matter because of the projects Cebu City Hall and the Capitol will have to work on together in the future, such as the swapping of their properties.
“I think Cebu prospers best when Cebu City and Cebu Province work together. But there are others who have a selfish agenda, who favor Ayala in a water deal, who have a parochial attitude; that’s when conflict starts,” he said when asked if the land swap has anything to do with his position on the issue.
“It’s a no-win situation if Cebu Province or Cebu City is going to end up fighting, not even for Cebu Province because it is located in Cebu City, and 80 percent of its assets are in the city,” Osmeña continued.
As a solution Osmeña proposed two things: the governor may recommend her own choice of board member, whom he will appoint if he is amenable; or for Cebu City to become part of the Province again.
“One political solution to this is magsabot na lang ta, that’s one way to handle it. If there is anyone who is acceptable to both of us, it can be make legitimate by my appointing that person,” he explained.
The mayor made the statement after Garcia asserted her appointing authority at the MCWD board.
Citing provisions of Presidential Decree 198, the governor said she believes she is the one empowered to appoint the board of directors of the water district.
PD 198 or the “Provincial Water Utilities Act of 1973” states that in the event that more than 75 percent of the total number of active water service connections are within the boundary of a city, the appointing authority shall be the mayor of that city or municipality, otherwise the appointing authority shall be the governor of the province within which the water district is located.”
But Osmeña said that even if the portion of MCWD clients in Cebu City is now only 63 percent, the number is still the majority and the governor cannot exercise her power over that majority because it is no longer under her jurisdiction.
In a radio dyLA interview yesterday, former senator John Henry “Sonny” Osmeña said they have already settled the issue on the appointing authority when he was officer-in-charge in Cebu City in 1987.
Drastic
Based on their review of the law at that time, it is the Cebu City mayor who has the right to appoint the members of the MCWD board of directors, he said.
He further said that if the law has not been revised yet, then the appointing authority still rests on the Cebu City mayor.
If the number of MCWD clients in Cebu City has already fallen below 75 percent, the former senator suggested cutting off service connections in Mandaue City to increase the percentage of connections in Cebu City.
In a phone interview yesterday, MCWD Board Chairman Juan Saul Montecillo said they cannot intervene in the debate on who should appoint the members of the board.
It will be useless for MCWD to go to court, he said, because the first time they sought the court’s clarification on the interpretation of Presidential Decree 198, it dismissed the MCWD board’s petition for declaratory relief.
Vacancy
“It was dismissed because the court said we’re not an interested party to the case. If there is anyone that can file a petition, the court said it is either Cebu City or Capitol,” he told Sun.Star Cebu.
The board is scheduled to discuss the governor’s letter during its next meeting.
In a letter addressed to MCWD board secretary Cynthia Barrit, the governor directed the latter to submit to Capitol a list of nominees for the two board positions that will be vacated on Dec. 31.
The mayor does not see any problem with this, saying that anybody has a right to get a copy of the list of nominees.
Osmeña had announced earlier that he will appoint Capitol consultant Pablo John Garcia but he recently found out that the governor’s brother is not qualified because he is not a resident of the franchise area of MCWD.
Pablo John is a registered voter of Barili town.
By expressing his intent to appoint Pablo John as board member at the end of the year, the mayor had hoped he was preventing a misunderstanding with Capitol.
“I hope (it does) not (end in a misunderstanding). That’s why I recommended Pablo John. Is that not an initiative on my part? I could have recommended somebody from this building,” he said during a press conference at City Hall.
If the matter is brought to court, Osmeña said he will elevate it to the Supreme Court since “it takes a more strategic look at the overall picture, while the local court looks only at the local application.”
Osmeña added that he will tell the Supreme Court that the law was approved when the city was still under the political jurisdiction of the Province, which is no longer the situation at this time.
