Barely two months after the city government reopened the Cebu City Sports Center (CCSC) to the public, they’re going to shut it down again. The closure, I was told, could come as early as the end of this month after the staging of the Pasigarbo sa Sugbo.
For more than a year, many of us had waited, sometimes not so patiently, for the repairs, that Mayor Michael Rama ordered in May last year, to be completed. We’ve heard of some friends who played cat and mouse with the mayor and his henchmen by jogging in the oval when nobody was watching. But that was not our style. We do not dare cross City Hall.
Acting Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia is the only chief executive of the city I know who has not jogged or at least walked in the CCSC. I walked with Tomas Osmeña at least once. Edgar Labella was a member of our Walk and Talk Club, and it was at the CCSC after they jogged that I noticed the budding romance between Rama and his wife, Malou.
But the fact that he does not exercise at the oval should not blind the acting mayor to the injustice that he would be committing against the people who find joy in starting their day at the CCSC by shutting it down again after only about a couple of months of being reopened. (Many, if not most, of these people vote in the city, by the way.)
If he does padlock the CCSC, he will not be the first mayor to do it, of course. Before Rama, Labella also banned the public from the sports center during the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, he converted the CCSC into a mini camp for policemen who had been moved to the city to prevent possible looting and to enforce the quarantine.
Labella’s move was therefore justifiable. Rama’s, too considering that he had to prepare the sports center for the Palaro although he overdid it by closing it prematurely for reasons that until now he has not explained.
What reason does Garcia have to get the repairs done immediately? The Palaro is done. And so will the Pasigarbo by then. Is it because they already have the money to fund it? Wow. As in wow!
The sad thing is that there are unresolved issues arising from the recent repairs that might require an ocular inspection of the CCSC. Will they not be seen as concealing the evidence by doing another round of repairs before a competent authority has examined it and determined its probative value?
The election in Cebu City next year is going to be close and interesting with at least four serious contenders for mayor: Garcia, Rama, Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) Chairman Joey Daluz and Councilor Nestor Archival. Nothing is impossible in politics but the likelihood of two or more of these candidates coalescing is closest to it. The die is cast.
In a tight election contest, even the most simple controversy could upend a candidate’s chances. The acting mayor is forewarned.