Tuesday, January 15, 2008 Seares: ‘Value for ‘value’ By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
VALUE for value” is Cebu Capitol’s condition for swapping lots with city-owned land.
They haven’t defined it but “value for value” must refer to Capitol property being exchanged with City Hall property, each of which will fetch about the same amount of money in the market.
Mayor Tomas Osmeña dismissed as “crap” Provincial Board (PB) Member Juan Bolo’s prodding for the parties to return to the negotiating table. Maybe he thought Capitol was not budging.
What the mayor wants isn’t “value for value.” He wants the original reference point: a total of 8.1 hectares of City-owned land near SM City and White Gold to be swapped with over 45 hectares of Province-owned lots occupied by 4,500 structures and 4,000 city voters.
Oddly, the City Council deemed it then as unfair, with City Hall believing it was getting a bad bargain and Capitol profiting without a sweat (“morag modawat lang og limpyo”). On the other side, PB thought that with planned commercial joint ventures, it was giving up prime lots for subprime land.
Gift from sale
When Pablo Picasso painted his famous portrait of Gertrude Stein, he was paid “nothing” for it. The painter told skeptics that when he did it, “the difference between a sale and a gift was negligible.”
The land swap is not something for nothing. Still, “value for value” won’t work for the City and anything less won’t work for the Province.
But Tomas has thrown something else into the pot: City Hall okay for stalled Capitol projects in the city.
That raises the value of what Capitol will get from the exchange. But isn’t there a broad hint of blackmail, which may brighten chances of a no-deal?
