Friday, August 10, 2007 Seares: On being ‘second-class citizens’ By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
OF COURSE, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña uses the phrase loosely when he says Capitol people are "second-class citizens" in the city because they don't pay taxes and don't vote here.
A citizen is member of a state or nation. Not that citizen. Despite its isolationist billing as an island in the Pacific, Cebu City is neither state nor nation.
There's another meaning. A citizen can be "a native, inhabitant, or denizen of any place," e.g. citizens of the deep.
Must be that one, but he must refer to government unit, the fiction of law.
Not the people running Capitol: Gov. Gwen Garcia and other province leaders, who don't vote in Cebu City but pay taxes directly and indirectly to City Hall because they own houses and businesses and consume goods and services in the city.
Creation of law
Mayor Tomas must mean the LGU, the corporate entity that keeps oodles of money and vast tracts of land in the city. He must mean the Capitol as juridical person and, increasingly, under Gov. Gwen's steering, as joint-venture business mogul.
The Capitol doesn't vote anywhere. It cannot.
And Capitol doesn't pay taxes because the law says so. Change the law, if the Constitution allows it, and Capitol will have to pay taxes.
But Capitol hires people, most of whom live and vote in, and pay taxes to, Cebu City. Capitol spends big sums of money on activities in the city, benefiting entrepreneurs who fill city coffers.
The "second-class" tag may be nothing but an outburst of pique or hate.
But there's no such thing as second-class citizens in a democracy. City Hall legal bright boys know there's, instead, equal protection of the laws that the Constitution guarantees everyone, including those in the mayor's hate list.
