Consultation by Google is “The process of formally (underline not mine) consulting or discussing.” By Wikipedia public consultation is the “process by which the public’s input on matters affecting them is sought.”
Mayor Michael Rama and the City Council must know what constitutes a genuine public consultation. Their monumental omission of it in recent City projects leads one to suspect they are knowingly reneging on their earlier promise and later responsibility to work for the welfare of all City residents.
They claim, for instance, to have consulted small vendors on the joint venture agreement (JVA) they signed with Megawide to modernize Carbon Market. In fact, however, vendors learned of the JVA only at the groundbreaking of the project. They were never consulted, not even informally, their after-the-fact inputs unceremoniously dismissed.
Mayor Rama and the Council displayed the same lack of respect for people’s rights in their plan to make Cebu City Singapore-like. On the pretext of getting them out of harm’s (flood’s) way, Mayor Rama and the City Council started demolishing informal settlers’ houses built inside river easement zones. All this without any prior agreement on appropriate compensation, permanent and, for now, temporary relocation.
It is happening again with the City’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). On Feb. 1 or 2, some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) received a summary of the City’s CLUP with the request to submit, and just submit, comments in five to six days or at the latest on Feb. 8. To make it even less of a consultation, we were denied a copy of the full plan.
We managed to meet our deadline for submission (only and no discussion) but not before letting the public know of our comments in a press conference.
Our principal demand is for a genuine consultation with a broad sector of Cebu society and for an extended deliberation on the matter because of the absence of some very critical provisions. Foremost among them: how take care of the victims of development (small vendors, informal settlers etc.), how reduce carbon emission, how properly dispose of solid waste, and how insure the food security of City residents. Also, the new plan lacks a data-based analysis of the results of the CLUP that 1,000 delegates from various sectors drafted in 2008.
The CLUP’s vision, we note, is that of a God-fearing and globally competitive Cebu City. We wonder if it will ever be God-fearing when it is now acting in a glaringly ungodly manner, developing the city for business only and throwing those who get in the way under the bus.
Finally, we suspect the CLUP is only for compliance with a Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) requirement and our comments only for a semblance of consultation. We challenge the City to promote people’s total welfare, not just business competitiveness. We challenge it to be God-fearing now by respecting the rights of the victims of big-business-oriented development.