BROADCASTER Bobby Nalzaro asked in his dySS commentary and his SunStar column Wednesday (Oct. 10) where Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña was. “Is he out of the country or on leave?”
The mayor went on a trip to Taiwan as Facebook footprints tell the public but he must be back already. He set up a Musikerong Sugboanon concert to raise funds for City of Naga landslide victims. He met with managers of call center firms about the safety of their workers. That means Tomas is very much in the city.
Silence on Malubog
What Bobby obviously calls out is the silence of the mayor. Mayor Tomas usually makes his presence felt by his pronouncements, often loud and attention-grabbing, on the current raging issue. When he keeps quiet, a Cebu City resident may assume the mayor is out of town or taking his “private time.”
Tomas’s reaction before to similar questionable killings that allegedly involved the police was quick and insistent: the fiascos in the attempt on the life of a Tejero barangay councilor and arrastre leader and the murder of a PDEA agent in Carcar City. A police officer died in each incident, both of which, a police official said, were not PNP operations.
The same indicators appear in the Oct. 4 multiple killings at Malubog, this city and the toll was heavier. Five suspected pushers, including a call center agent, were gunned down. A woman self-confessed drug courier was shot at and a “habal-habal” driver was shot but they survived. Police said it was the work of “organized crime” but the two witnesses initially said the killers were cops. Tomas would’ve enough basis to raise an outcry.
Other voices
None came from the mayor. Why do opinion writers like Bobby miss Tomas’s voice? Some Cebu leaders merely asked for the police to stop and solve the killings. Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma made a plea to the authorities and a prayer to God. A few others, including a businessman, said the increasing death toll in Cebu is “not alarming.”
Tomas’s stance against the extrajudicial killings was strong and combative. Underscore “was” because he has been silent for some time now and one can’t be sure if he keeps the same view and vigor when he speaks out again.
What his critics say
Critics of the mayor say he blew up over the incident involving the barangay official because the target is a valued political ally. Pouncing on the Carcar ambush and the possible role of the police in it was just to enforce his theory that police were suspects in the rash of killings in Cebu.
The same political rivals also note that Tomas encouraged, if he didn’t sponsor, the activities of vigilantes who went after crime suspects in the past. He would rant against it now, his enemies say, because he didn’t have any part in the campaign and his prized leader was among those being hunted down.
Options
A plausible explanation for the mayor’s thundering silence, which goes against his fighting streak and character that Cebuanos have been used to watch in full display, is that he is still licking his wounds from the public shaming inflicted by President Duterte twice.
And Tomas must be thinking harder and longer to assess the damage and examine the options of someone visited by presidential fury.
Bobby, a known critic of Tomas, may be suspected of gloating over the mayor’s plight and highlighting the misery. Yet the opinion maker also raised the question many Cebu City residents could only privately ask.