"Chain of approvals" doesn’t guarantee terms of grant or permit weren’t violated. Complaint with Ombudsman may be prompted by the "failure" of executive department to address Councilor Alcover’s call to stop the alleged violations.
INTERESTING, even titillating takeaways from the controversy over the Night Market, the Cebu City Government has allowed to operate under a private group:
[1] CORE ISSUE: IS CITY HALL BEING SCREWED? Cebu City Councilor Pastor Alcover Jr. hasn’t publicly used the word “screwed” but the slang in positive context aptly describes the dilemma.
Councilor Jun alleges the City Government is screwed, in the sense that it’s “being taken advantage of, financially, through trickery or unfair terms.” One party is being dishonest or taking advantage of the other. Obviously, Alcover contends that the City is not just getting “the short end of the bargain”; it is being cheated or scammed.
[2] LEGAL TANGLE MAY CONFUSE US. Mayor Nestor Archival Sr., along with the City Legal Office (CLO), has defended the deal as “both legal and valid.” “All within the bounds of the law and under proper city authority,” one news report summed it up.
The CLO’s opinion, sought by the City Council and given Monday, October 27, said (1) the Night Market was legislatively authorized by ordinance; (2) the GASA ordinance cited by Alcover applies only to sidewalk vendors; (3) the power is within the mayor’s scope of authority under the Local Government Code covers the grant.
CLO traced the trail of compliance, from the Traffic Management Committee Board to City Council to the Business Permit and Licensing Office, which issued the special business permit to one Ibrahim “Mark” A. Dianala, chairman of PASVI or Participative Association of Sugbo Vendors Inc. City Attorney Briccio Joseph Boholst in the CLO opinion called it “a chain of approvals.”
On the other hand, Coun. Jun’s complaint alleges “graft, gross misconduct and abuse of authority,” alleging that the Night Market defies the law and operates without ordinance and the city mayor and two other city officials violated Code of Conduct and Standards for Government Officials and Employees.
One side says this. The other side says that. There’s the presumption of regularity, which supports the mayor and two officials, the CLO opinion says. Yet there’s the reality that often a transaction may follow the bureaucratic requirements and yet still violate rules during the implementation.
Councilor Jun cites examples such as this: The City Council approved the operation for a specific period; Dianala/PASVI continued to operate beyond the grant’s term. Is driving with an expired license not illegal? Doesn’t it amount to driving without a license?
Litigation eventually resolves questions of law and fact. The public though wants know now whether the City is not being screwed, which even in the years of big-scale, shameless looting of public funds must still appall.
[3] HOW ABOUT WHAT ATTY. OLIVA WOULD CALL ‘AD HOMINEMS,’ or arguments directed against the person, rather than the position he’s pushing? (Ex-treasurer-now-vlogger Regal Oliva -- in her own controversy over an anti-Duterte “Point of View” -- deplored discourse dragged down by irrelevant personal attacks.)
Like Mayor Nes saying in response to Coun. Jun’s filing of charges: Alcover is “just drawing attention to himself,” “mao na iyang role sa kinabuhi,” “mangita man gyud na siya’g samok,” “gusto gyod seguro na siyang mosikat.”
The mayor said the City Legal Office already answered Alcover through its legal opinion. Apparently the CLO opinion, sticking to the question of legality, didn’t tackle other issues such as violations allegedly committed after the City Council grant and the business permit issue. Or the question of alleged unfairness of the deal, with a private individual/group supposedly raking in a lot more money from the Night Market than the City Government.
[4] POSITION OF COUNCIL MAJORITY ON DISPUTE. The majority in the City Council is not BOPK. A Kusug-Barug coalition has the vote. But there’s no clear showing yet of a showdown between the minority and the majority on the Night Market issue.
Alcover has so far pushed his resolutions through the legislature. After all, his initial moves were limited to asking for “a legal review and temporary suspension” of the Night Market. Now that the dispute is elevated to the Ombudsman, the City Council might pause and wait for a resolution by the anti-graft agency or press Mayor Nes for a suspension.
But the mayor’s office prevails in the interim. The mayor may ignore as a matter of routine what the City Council says on matters not involving appropriation or pending of money. A reality that Mayor Nes learned early enough, when he was minority floor-leader. He would lament then, What are we in the City Council for (“unsay pulos”) when the mayor just ignores our resolutions?
We aren’t even informed about his action on what the City Council says or asks. Presently, the former councilor is in the mayor’s shoes, and another councilor could sing Nestor’s lament in the past.
[5] ARCHIVAL SUSPENSION TO BENEFIT TOMAS OSMEÑA, described by City Hall watchers as bitter political enemy of the vice mayor. If, a big "if," Mayor Archival is preventively suspended -- which Alcover’s complaint with the Ombudsman asks -- Vice Mayor Osmeña will become acting mayor. And Tomas and Jun Alcover are “bitterer” political enemies than the mayor and the councilor are. Mayor Nes and Kons Jun can still stand being photographed together, smiling and all, but obviously not Tomas and Jun. Osmeña sued Alcover for cyber-libel in 2019, which was dismissed in 2022. Last October, Alcover sued Osmeña over the “Mayor of the Night” project.
Alcover had said he wouldn’t mind but it would be just changing, temporarily, the city chief executive to battle with.
[6] “WHERE’S THE MONEY?” The iconic line in the 1996 movie “Jerry Maguire” (with Tom Cruise) is in effect asked in the Alcover noise over the Night Market. Coun. Jun alleges that over 600 vendors are charged P6,000 each monthly stall fee by the private organizer, amounting to P3.6 million a month or P7.2 million-plus.
But only P200,000 per month was remitted to the City Government, leaving, in Alcover’s estimate, an unremitted balance of P3.4 million monthly or a total of P6.8 million “unaccounted for.” The City Treasurer’s Office official collection is only “arkabala” for daily per-stall fee of P20-P30.
[7] PRIVATIZING THE NIGHT MARKET is, in effect, what has been done. Did the City Council know that and include the condition on fees in the grant of authority for its operation? Did the legislature keep the right to regulate the stall fees? Maybe it did a sloppy job in setting the terms of the grant to PAVIS.
As it has turned out, PAVIS rents out the stalls at a price it decides and sets, collects the fees from the vendors, and later gives City Hall its “paltry” share.
“Modawat og limpyo,” true. But now Alcover sees the pile of money going into private pocket and the trickle the City Government gets -- and complains, as he believes a councilor or any other government official should.
Mayor Nes explained that the City Government wouldn’t have the people and skills to run the Night Market. Private enterprise has. The city officials on both sides of the dispute have to do more to reduce the public’s corruption jitters. They must show that no chicanery went into the choice of the private group now profiting from the Night Market and the fixing of the stall fee.
They need to take steps to correct the alleged flaws that enable private individuals to enrich themselves through City Hall, ah, screw-ups.