I might have been too quick to react to Vice Mayor Tommy Osmeña’s move for the Supreme Court (SC) to void Cebu City’s Joint Venture Agreement (JVA) with Megawide. On second look, his appeal might just be for good optics. He could possibly be just stalling.
First, it faces many legal-procedural obstacles. His original case was dismissed by a district court many years ago. Why is he appealing only now? And why directly to the SC and not to the Court of Appeals, as is the proper procedure?
Second, Mayor Archival has flipped with limp excuses like he is “mayor for all, not just for the vendors” and the JVA is “legal and not disadvantageous to the city or vendors.” Yet he and Osmeña are not quarreling and are on good terms. This is strange since, as someone who knows Tommy well tells me, Osmeña goes ballistic when a BOPK member fails to toe the line. What game then could these two possibly be playing?
Third, the City Council is unexpectedly silent. One half of the Council is BOPK and toes the line drawn by Tommy Osmeña. That should create a clear pro-vendor majority in the council. Yet, why is the council not making any move to at least review the terms of the JVA?
Meanwhile, C2W, Megawide’s subsidiary, is forcing the issue by speeding up the construction of Carbon’s main building and announcing the start of their collection of fees. It is forcing its way towards implementing a JVA that is unfair to Cebu City and disastrous to vendors and the consuming public.
If privatized, Carbon goes where there is profit. And profit comes from high rental and entrance fees for high-end resellers. This has two disastrous results. One, ambulant vendors cannot afford the fees and will have to find other places to sell their wares from. And two, without the ambulant vendors, prices of everything sold in Carbon will go up.
At this juncture, there seems to be only one way to prevent Carbon from being privatized. Carbon’s privatization is Cebu City’s fault. It, therefore, behooves it to correct this anomaly. But since Cebu City is even more ambivalent now than before on the issue, it is left to the people of Cebu to show up and be counted, ever so legally and peacefully, on the side of keeping Carbon Market public. Carbon Alliance must not only remain united but must also widen the scope of its unity by appealing to the general public’s support.
It’s time for all socially responsible citizens of Cebu to oppose Cebu City’s heartless disregard for the right of ambulant vendors to their traditional means of livelihood. Megawide is just being true to its nature as a business. It is Cebu City that has reneged on its responsibility of serving its public and taken the easy way out instead. It’s time Cebuanos come together and mass to reproach public officials who heartlessly (in exchange for what, I wonder) leave small ambulant vendors without their traditional means of livelihood and the public without their traditional source of affordable prime commodities.