LOOK at Cebu City in Georgia Osmeña’s eyes: City Hall is “badly run”; — Resources are “terribly, grossly mismanaged”;
u2014 The city’s poor are “driven to desperation because of leaders’ failure to give basic services.”
Georgia said she talked with the “little people” of the city and “listened to their woes.” She walked “back streets and alleys and mountain barangays” and she saw “squalid conditions, abject neglect”: “chaotic traffic, potholed streets littered with garbage.”
She heard the people’s cry, she said. She’s running for mayor as she wants to end the long-running tenure of BOPK that she blames for the city’s “sad state.”
Like the motive of anyone wanting to wrest power from those holding it, Georgia’s intentions are inevitably suspect.
Reason to listen
Yet, there’s reason to listen. She’s an Osmeña, who also wants to serve and who doesn’t agree with her brother’s way of running City Hall. What she says deserves scrutiny if not belief.
Unfortunately, one doesn’t get the answer from the mayor. Tomas didn’t lash at his sister with his usual brusqueness but neither did he meet the issue head-on.
Instead, he talked about the City’s cash balance when he first assumed as mayor (“P12-P14 million”) and as of the other day (“about P3.19 billion”).
Georgia harped on alleged neglect and waste. Tomas retorted with how much money the City now has.
Voters can’t trust the exchange between them to provide enlightenment.
But voters can see things by themselves. They can test the truth of what Georgia alleged by looking at actual conditions in the community.
(paseares@yahoo.com)