IT’S not yet certain if the promise of rescinding or annulling the SRP lots sale helped Kasambagan Barangay Captain Franklyn Ong, BOPK’s bet in the Cebu City ABC elections, win. Maybe not at all.
Perhaps the propaganda of alleged Malacañang bribery hurled against his opponent Mabolo Barangay Captain Niña Mabatid and the fallout leading to the Barug-PDP Laban boycott set off the BOPK “landslide.”
But Mayor Tomas Osmeña dangled the lure before the voting Monday, July 30. With a BOPK-dominated City Council, he said, the City will petition Comelec to include in the 2019 midterm election ballots the proposition to rescind the P16.7-billion sale of SRP lots to big-time developers SM-Ayala and Filinvest.
Initiative, annulment
Apparently, the ABC members, particularly those who voted for Ong, didn’t notice the holes in the mayor’s proposal:
* The initiative he referred to is a petition proposing to enact or adopt an ordinance. But there’s no longer any need for that since a BOPK-controlled City Council itself can pass the ordinance.
An initiative requires (1) at least 1,000 signatures of registered city voters on the petition and, later, (2) at least 10 percent of all registered voters with three percent of each legislative district represented and, after Comelec verification, (3) a special registration and, finally, the plebiscite or election.
Why go through all that if BOPK already controls the City Council? Wasn’t the hassle the major reason the mayor hasn’t resorted to an initiative since he floated the idea days after he won, with a Team Rama-dominated City Council, in the 2016 elections?
* Rescission or annulment of the contracts with Ayala-SM and Filinvest may be ordered by a city ordinance or by the majority of the voters in an initiative--and yet would still not rescind or annul them.
Not unilateral
The City cannot unilaterally rescind or annul the contracts. Despite an ordinance passed by the City Council or a people-ratified initiative, the SM-Ayala and Filinvest contracts with the City Government will remain valid until decreed by the court in a litigation, which can be protracted and may go all way to the Supreme Court.
What the City Council can do is merely to authorize the mayor to sue and take other steps to bar the enforcement of the contracts. Those contracts are the law between them. It is the burden of the City to prove that, as the mayor declared last May 10, 2016, the sales were “dubious, if not corrupt.” And that carries the risk of paying huge damages for the breach.
Suspense baits
But the legal mumbo-jumbo must have the least influence on the results of the ABC elections. And certainly not the most interesting.
Instead, what put City Hall watchers on seat edge until the results were known:
* Whether a barangay captain with a serious “conflict of interest” problem because of his company’s multi-million-peso deals with the city would win. (He did.)
* Or whether his rival, supposedly supported by Malacañang with promised million-peso projects, would beat him. (She did not.)