He skipped gut issues: water, sanitation, migration, drugs, shoddy schools, patchy health services, unsolved vigilante murders, malnutrition, etc. Instead, he opted for bromides, in future tense.
Cebuanos will “become self-sufficient,” he proclaimed. The city will ”soar” from a fire sale of 30 hectares of South Road Properties (SRP) that’d become “world class,” electric company royalties, investors---all in the future. Counting chickens before eggs are hatched, however, doesn’t bridge basic service gaps.
“The whole art of a political speech is to put nothing into it,” English writer Hilarie Belloc observed. “It is much more difficult than it sounds.”
No sweat. Osmeña urged teamwork to meet “the dangerous situation coming from Provincial Government.” Like what? Capitol flagged Torrens titles for a run-down zoo, a down-at-the-heels Fuente Osmeña and held on to a shabby bus terminal. Included is a prime provincial lot where a committee now screens occupants, squatters--–and voters.
Despite a daily P1-million bill for yen loan interest, “the city can progress without the Province’s help,” Osmena insisted. “With SRP, we have the means to take off.” Hey, who hit the replay button?
“No one will beat us,” the mayor said in a mid-term state-of-the-city address. “We will be second to none.” That echoed his first inaugural pledge: Cebu would top the 80-plus cities then (now 123--–and counting).
Marikina, Muntinlupa and Davao promptly won the major governance awards. And Cebu flubbed the 2006 Asian Institute of Management survey of Philippine cities. Why? Reread the mayor’s speeches.
His first inaugural address urged legalizing of tigbakay (cockfighting) and improved tax collection. A later state-of-the-city address cited these “major achievements”: video carrera down by 80 percent; companies caving in on franchise taxes---and an election year “asphalt storm.”
These fall far short of what Cebuanos need in a 21st century of fiber optics, urbanization, wireless Internet, massive migration and globalization plus terrorism, Cebu Daily News snapped.
An inaugural address need not match Cicero’s “First Oration Against Cataline” (43 B.C.?) or Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” (1951). But can’t officials go beyond rhetoric to address basic issues?
Contrast Cebu’s emerging water crisis with reform of water delivery in Metro Manila. “Millions now receive better water services at affordable cost,” World Bank’s Joachim von Amsberg said. Some get “piped water and sanitation for the first time in their lives.”
The Ayala-led Manila Water is a “proven success story” where government recast its old role as primary provider into that of new enabler. Financially successful, Manila Water attracts additional capital to expand coverage. “Transparent rebidding of the Maynilad concession offers promise of a similar success story for the west service.”
And here? Complex urban problems have long outstripped hand-me-down structures of 19th century city halls. Feudal lords, with councils of subservient satraps, still rule.
But we pay our officials, not to fool around with political tigbakay. We expect them to think through policies that the city needs for century ahead---and ensure they’re implemented. Only then, should they speak.
“Speech,” after all, “is the small change of silence.”
