Seares: Why Sinulog Foundation most likely won’t assail mayor’s control over NGO

Related column: “Seares: Does the mayor have legal authority over Sinulog Foundation, an NGO?” (Aug. 30, 2019)

Cebu City Vice Mayor Mike Rama, current chairman of the Sinulog Foundation Inc. (SFI), the group that has been managing the Sinulog mardi gras for 35 years now, has not been heard from again since his Aug. 27 blast at the mayor’s executive order creating a governing board that controls the festival.

He was still to meet with members of the SFI board. No news about that and no peep from the vice mayor yet.

City Hall watchers hold it unlikely that Mike would come out screaming at the set of controls being clamped on SFI.

The airing of his “surprise” and disappointment at his press-con last week might not be followed by anything worse, keep those fingers crossed.

Labella’s assurance

Mayor Edgar Labella, who issued the unnumbered EO without conferring with his vice mayor, has assured the public that SFI headed by VM Mike would still run the show and the governing board would merely provide “checks and balances” and the badge of transparency.

It was not known if the two Partido Barug stalwarts, who cut down the huge political timber of a Tomas Osmeña in the last election, had already met since Mayor Labella returned from a brief trip abroad.

Whatever the result of an SFI board meeting or the face-to-face Mike-Edgar talk (if one or both were held already), the interval of silence is a good sign for the party and the city.

Turbulence put off

It suggests both potential combatants are not quite willing or ready to engage in an open fight over political turf. It indicates Sinulog 2020 may be spared, for now, from the turbulence of feuding leaders.

Mayor Edgar must realize by now that his legal control over SFI, a private foundation and a nongovernment organization, is tenuous at best.

His control is not based on a city ordinance or a provision of law. It flows from an informal arrangement under which Cebu City—as festival initiator, convenor and major financer—calls the shots. What started as an honorary chair in SFI for the city’s highest official morphed into a top seat for the chief executive or his vice mayor.

Sinulog as toddler

It has come to a situation that without the government’s support, the Sinulog management may flounder. Sinulog has been like a toddler leaning on the support of City Hall for so long that it has not learned to stand on its own, under the private sector, the initial plan.

The dependence has been mostly nurtured by politicians who see the Sinulog as source of goodwill from celebrants, most of whom are their voters. The original intent to spare the festival from the taint of politics was apparently junked for the existing alliance.

City officials used to be shy about exposing their ties to Sinulog, fearing a “conflict of interest” when they are, as elected leaders, give public money to SFI and, as officers of the foundation, receive and spend the same funds for the festival. That timidity is apparently is a thing of the past, Maybe COA and other guardians of public assets see no legal or moral problem. The mayor or the vice mayor now openly display their link to SFI.

Unresolved kinks

This time, Mayor Labella has stripped official pretense of having no conflicted interest in SFI, even going over the edge, some lawyers say. He did that by issuing the executive order that tells all that SFI is part of the city hierarch: a public office under the supervision and control of the city mayor.

Even if SFI accepts the authority of the mayor by embracing the newly created governing board —which “oversees, reviews and approves” all the acts of the foundation—they still have to define functions, limits and boundaries, especially on the actual organizing and running of the festival.

The two layers tend to overlap and cause problems. While a clash with VM and political ally Mike Rama may be avoided for now, the legal issue of City Hall control over SFI and the Sinulog festival will remain. It could be a flash point in a future crisis.

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