The last time I watched the Sinulog at the venue was 10 years ago. For a decade now, I have not jostled with the crowd at the parade route like I used to or craned my neck over the shoulders of the people in front of me at the grandstand for a better view of the contingents, their colorful costumes and their elaborate dance steps.
Like many Cebu City residents, I stay home on Sinulog Sundays, watching the proceedings on live TV. Even on the boob tube and even after more than 40 seasons of repetition, the country’s most popular cultural spectacle always entertains.
I would have preferred being where the action was. It’s like watching a basketball game. While watching it on TV in the comfort of your bedroom is more relaxing, being in the coliseum witnessing the players bang bodies and listening to the crowd roar is a more exhilarating experience.
But when you’re mid-seventyish and have had two serious health scares, your options are limited. Besides, it feels good to think that by not going out, you have in a little way contributed to the Sinulog’s being enjoyable to the guests by not competing with them for that precious little space that gives you vantage point in the parade route or in the bleachers.
It is our Sinulog. We are called upon to give something of ourselves, to sacrifice a little, to make it attractive and enjoyable to our visitors. That is why we make the most unbearable traffic situation bearable to us.
That is why we walk, instead of drive or be driven, to our workplaces on Sinulog Sunday. Ethel, our daughter-in-law, did that from Tormis St. to Cebu Doctors Hospital and back to attend to a patient who needed immediate medical attention. Osmeña Boulevard, including Fuente Osmeña, was teeming with humanity at that time but she never complained. It is our Sinulog, she was aware of that.
That is why it is disheartening to note how a simple clamping incident near the Basilica — the heart of the religious observance of the Sinulog, no less — could so quickly escalate into a nasty word war between a city councilor and the city’s top traffic official, a few days before the Sinulog.
From what we have read about the incident, the feud started when traffic enforcers clamped two vehicles parked in what they knew to be a no-parking zone. What the enforcers did not know was that the cars were owned by two honorable members of the city council.
The owners did not make a fuss but a colleague did. The councilors were advised by the vice mayor that they could park their cars in the area while their regular exclusive parking spaces were not available, and the enforcers dared defy the vice mayor? What insolence, he fumed. When the traffic head responded, the word war erupted.
Let me get this straight. The cars were parked in a no-parking zone. If a multicab owned by ordinary guys like us had been found there, it would have been clamped and the poor driver or owner would have had no right to complain. But it’s different if the owner is a high public official.
Public officials should not claim or be vested rights to the exclusive use of real estate owned by the people solely on account of their office. Why should they not be made to compete with the ordinary citizen for parking space? After all they’re supposed to be public servants. Besides, they have drivers whose salaries are paid by the people.
But if they believe that they are special and should be treated specially, and have to demonstrate that point strongly, perhaps even angrily, they shouldn’t do it during the Sinulog. It is ours after all.