Friday, July 11, 2008 Gwen won’t run for higher post By Gerome M. Dalipe Sun.Star Correspondent
CEBU Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia last night rebuffed talk that she will run for a higher office in the 2010 elections, saying she would rather focus on challenges here.
She also kept up a running theme in her annual State of the Province Address since 2005, that of Cebu Province being debt-free. After posting P17 billion in assets in 2007, the province is “the strongest” it has ever been, the second-term governor added.
“We are now, without any doubt, the richest province in the country, not just in the present, but at any given time in this country’s history,” Garcia told local officials, business leaders and other guests at the Capitol Social Hall.
Her 45-minute speech, interrupted by applause more than 20 times, highlighted that the Province’s total assets have increased by more than 300 percent from P2 billion in 2004 when she won her first term.
“There is so much to be done here,” she said. “And the challenges, this sense of hope, our simple pride in being Cebuano are too strong and irresistible.”
“I cannot find myself leaving Cebu for anything—not for money, nor for fame, nor for greatness. Not even for higher office. My fellow Cebuanos, I am here to stay.”
Garcia pointed out that despite a “phenomenal” increase in spending for basic services and infrastructure projects, the Province still has a surplus of over P1.3 billion.
“Unlike local government units in the country, including one whose local chief executive seems to draw sustenance from his hostility to and obvious envy of the Province, we remain debt-free,” said the governor, apparently referring to Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
The two local executives have been openly critical of each other’s projects ever since a proposed land exchange deal between the City and Province collapsed in early 2006. Last year, the Province closed certain roads in the city that crossed Capitol-owned lots, while the City sat on permit applications for a provincial project in Banilad.
Both parties are now fighting in court over ownership of Fuente Osmeña and surrounding properties.
But Garcia said last night she will not be drawn into a war of words or “odious comparisons that are the mark of a basic insecurity.”
“This much we can say: we have not mortgaged our present, much less our future, for debt from which there seems to be no relief in sight.”
She reported how the Provincial Government recovered 164 hectares of Capitol-owned lots scattered in Cebu City, including the 80-hectare Camp Lapu-Lapu property, 22-hectare Boy Scout lots and Cebu City Zoo.
The governor also promised that 534 kilometers of provincial roads will be asphalted by the end of 2008.
She announced the conversion of 69 bridges from wooden to concrete, construction of seven national bridges, 71 two-classroom school buildings, additional district hospitals, water system projects and electrification projects in remote barangays.
She also mentioned in passing a lawsuit filed against the Province by WT Construction, which claimed that the Capitol owed it P261 million for additional work on the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC).
The governor clarified that the Provincial Government will await the court’s decision on the matter, but that the CICC continues to earn in the meantime.
“The project has been earning revenues for the Province in the past one and half years since it opened. And we are not paying for any interests or the principal of any bank loan.”
Apparently referring to the City’s South Road Properties, the governor said that unlike the Province, another local government unit is paying for the principal and interests on the loan used to finance a project that’s “just lying there empty, save for some migratory birds, and has not earned a single centavo for the people.”
In contrast, the governor said, the CICC generated more than P32 million from 237 events for January 2007 to June 2008.
