Friday, July 27, 2007 Wenceslao: Cebu City plus Cordova: assuming ra kaayo By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
CORDOVA Mayor Adelino Sitoy is a veteran politician. That he seems to be riding on the coat tails of Mayor Tomas Osmeña on the proposal to annex his town to Cebu City is thus surprising. Or is he just humoring Osmeña? I think he knows that, in Ludabispeak, realizing the annexation plan is, “subidahon.” Is Sitoy partial for mental calisthenics?
Cordova, admittedly, is a sleepy town, pushed into a corner of Mactan Island by the now highly urbanized Lapu-Lapu City.
Sitoy most have surveyed his turf one day and saw only a flat rocky terrain, bushes and fishing villages---and lost hope in the future. Sometimes one needs to have fertile imagination to divine potentials in a rustic setting.
Cordova is more of an appendage to Lapu-Lapu than a part of Cebu City. People are calling Mactan, where Cordova belongs, an island for a reason. It is separated from the Cebu mainland, where Cebu City is, by the Mactan Channel. But politicians.
They see the silhouette of Cordova from the Cebu City shore and say the two areas are contiguous.
Here’s the thing. Cordova’s butt is also visible from Bohol. Can we say Cordova is contiguous with, say, Jetafe, should attach itself to that town and be under Bohol’s turf? Reminds me of one of the towns in Camotes, Pilar, which is nearer to Ormoc than to the Cebu mainland. One day its officials might want the town attached to that Leyte city.
I pity Sitoy`s predecessors, they who must have so dreamt of something big for Cordova they insisted on pushing for its town-hood. It takes optimism and foresight to blaze trails or to push for political independence. On the other hand, it does not take much mind work to deconstruct a town and annex it to a bigger territorial unit.
Definitely, Cordova is not at the dead-end of economic growth. That brings me to Balamban, a formerly backward municipality that also seemed to be at an economic dead-end until a shipbuilding firm set up camp there. That shows no one can really predict the future, that’s why town leaders should not lose hope and should persevere.
Yet, Cordova is actually luckier than the other towns in the province in that it is within Metro Cebu and more so in Mactan Island where the potential for economic growth is great. While Lapu-Lapu has so far been the center of attention, Cordova won’t wait a long time for the spillover. Mactan is a small island and it is progressing fast.
And if Sitoy plays his cards well, he can draw in major projects from the National Government considering the town’s location being the closest Cebu town to Bohol. That bridge he has been harping on to connect Cordova to Shell Island and to the South Road Properties (SRP) can be pushed without destroying the town’s political structure.
As for Cebu City, I would say it will be stretching itself thin if it reaches out to far off Cordova. It cannot even manage the traffic in the Banilad-Talamban area and has not fully developed its mountain barangays and the south district. Worse, it still has to straighten out its finances considering the need to repay the debt it incurred for the SRP.
If its officials cannot even deliver the basic services to Cebu City as presently constituted, how much more for a mega-city with a “Cordova district” that belongs to another island? Our youngsters have a description for that: assuming ra kaayo.
