Sunday, November 09, 2008 Mercado: A harem of shadows By Juan L. Mercado Sidebar
Mayor Tomas Osmeña slammed the door behind him as he started “indefinite leave.” He traded yet more barbs with Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia before flying to Texas Sunday for bladder cancer treatment.
His Honor has a rough patch ahead. In 1995, my wife had surgery, six chemo sessions, followed by radiation, for breast cancer. But God was good. Today, she’s what they call a “survivor.” We pray the mayor will be one too. Thus Osmeña is right in refusing to resign.
Before take-off, the mayor delivered his 2008 State of the City address. That’s part of “the last chapter of my service as a public official,” he said. Cebuanos call this panamilit?
Osmeña didn’t clash with the governor over vision or policy. The picayune brawl swirled around who was greater in the kingdom of Commission on Audit reports.
The city, with a yen debt overload and still-to-be peddled land? Or the Province, with hefty cash surpluses but lower collections?
The mayor’s sick leave may stretch beyond Christmas. But Cebu “is in good hands,” Osmeña assured all and sundry. He had trained officials and followers, so the mayor became dispensable. These are admirable sentiments.
They are also baloney. Osmeña brooked no dissent. His one-man rule reduced the Council to a “harem of eunuchs.” No City Hall official dared ask him the tough questions: from yen loans, water policy, migration, health services to green belts and vigilante murders. He made subservience lucrative. Like the proverbial banyan tree, no one grew in Osmeña’s shadow.
“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change, or nods when I nod,” the exasperated Greek philosopher Plutarch told disciples: “My shadow does that better.”
If Osmeña quoted Plutarch, in his address, his followers would have nodded -- from sheer habit. Obsequiousness is addictive. Over the years, City Hall officials atrophied into pathetic Osmeña shadows: “Men are often bribed, more by their loyalties and ambitions, than by money,” Justice Robert Jackson once said.
Will City Hall officials emerge as decisive leaders when the mayor is hooked to his chemo tubes? Leadership does not emerge overnight. Thus, realism demands we Cebuanos gird for prolonged shadow-nodding.
But problems of a modern city, like the tide, wait for no man. Migration has pushed growth of Cebu’s population to double national rates. Stemming from poverty, chronic hunger stunts four of 10 kids. Aquifers are being “mined” twice the recharge rate. Per capita debt burden on Cebuanos (P60,645) is roughly double that on the national levels.
Osmeña’s addresses are of uneven quality. The first one spoke of curbing tigbakay and improving tax collection. “Insipid and not exactly the stuff of reform,” this paper said. His five minute 2003 speech didn’t stray beyond his awards, video carrera and a P400 million asphalt storm.” City Hall’s website displays only the 2002 to 2006 speeches. The rest were “forgettable”?
This year’s address focuses on South Reclamation Properties. Fine. But no city ever developed on just one project. “Cities become engines of growth” if the “quiet revolution” – securing broad private participation while trimming government role – occurs, World Bank says. “A third generation of sustainable cities that mimic the metabolism of nature is starting to emerge…Exploring a new vision for cities is of utmost priority…”
“In the present lies the dreams of what the city could be – and the nightmare of what the city will become if current trends continue,” Anne Whiston Spirin wrote in “The Granite Garden.”
Choosing between dream or nightmare depends on whether Osmeña sells SRP lots or nurtured wimps as successors. Ayo-ayo, Mayor.
