YOU know what they say, when it rains you get wet. Unless you carry an umbrella or manage to find shelter before the first drops fall.
In the case of the Cebu City Government and the administration of Mayor Edgardo Labella, their situation is like getting caught, unprepared, in the middle of a grassy field with no tree in sight when the downpour begins.
And it’s not like they didn’t see it coming. Storm clouds are hard to miss. Or they could have easily checked the real-time forecast on the internet just to be sure, but obviously they didn’t.
Still, everybody knows there are no absolutes when it comes to the weather. It can do a 180 with the snap of a finger.
So the Cebu City Government finds itself being washed away by the deluge that is the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.
Because when it rains, it also pours.
Since the end of March, when the virus first made landing on our shores, the Labella administration has been drenched so many times I’ve stopped counting.
It doesn’t help the mayor one bit that there are many people out there who have nothing better to do than point and laugh and ridicule him whenever that happens, which, as I have just said, is quite often.
Labella deserves our help. He deserves our sympathy. He deserves our cooperation. He is valiantly struggling to steer the ship that is the City Government out of a whirlpool that threatens to crush it and drown everyone inside.
This health crisis is a flood of biblical proportions.
(If I don’t pace myself, I’m going to run out of water imagery soon.)
With that said, I think Labella and his administration should try to avoid finding themselves in these awkward situations. That way, his critics and the public won’t have reason to criticize.
But it looks like his luck has not changed.
Over the weekend, we were treated to the latest episode of the ongoing “tuob” saga. I mean, who needs ABS-CBN, right? The plot twists in the steam inhalation narrative puts telenovelas to shame.
Did the mayor really not know about the P2.5 million purchase of 1,000 “tuob” kits composed of, get this, an electric water heater/steamer, a steam gown, an adult bath towel, two hand towels, an industrial plastic chair aka a Monobloc chair and a water basin?
The kits were already distributed to various barangay isolation centers.
And what about the 72-year-old man who died at the end of May who was recently certified to be clinically recovered from Covid-19 by the City Health Department (CHD)?
Granted, the CHD is currently undermanned and mistakes do happen, especially in these trying times, but this latest snafu only reinforces the public’s perception that the City Government may be out of its depth.