Saturday, August 16, 2008 Editorial: Mayor Osmeña's dare
MAYOR Tomas Osmeña’s defiant reaction to the flak he received for attempting to break the picket of Gaisano South employees gave away the reason for his daring to do the controversial act.
He apparently thought that suing him for brandishing a gun in a picket line won’t work, thus the challenge, which is almost a taunt, for the Associated Labor Union (ALU) to sue him.
This point is not as much a rap on the integrity of people in, say, the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas or other agencies like the National Labor Relations commission as it is about recognizing the reality in suits against influential government officials.
Cases against powerful personalities often gather dust in courts, that is, if they even reach that level, as there are many available schemes to thwart the successful prosecution of their cases.
Many enemies
What should work against the mayor, however, is that what he did could further worsen people’s negative perception of his style of governance and character.
Osmeña may feel that another blow on his public image won’t matter politically considering that he is no longer qualified to run for mayor in 2010, and that even if he does run for other posts he can still win considering our faulty electoral setup.
He can even argue that losing ALU’s support in the next elections won’t dent his and his Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan’s winning chances because there may not have been a labor or ALU vote after all.
But, as in the case of his cousin, former senator John Osmeña, the load of making too many enemies could pull him down politically before he realizes it is too late.
Post-Osmeña City Hall
This could rub off on the candidates he will be supporting come 2010.
Indeed, every time the mayor does some objectionable act diminishes the winning chances of the candidate he will push to replace him, which he said could be Vice Mayor Michael Rama.
What compounds the problem is that nobody among the BO-PK officials, including Rama, has been exhibiting recently the independence needed to be able to run a post-Osmeña City Hall well.
The silence of Rama and the councilors on the Osmeña caper, for example, has been deafening.
