Osmeña on MCDCB

Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña has long refused to help form or join a Metro Cebu body he could not dominate. I am not surprised, therefore, of his announcement that he would shun the Mega Cebu program of the Metro Cebu Development Coordinating Board (MCDCB) while minimizing the importance of the MCDCB itself.

Okay, it may not only be dominance that Osmeña wants. If my memory serves me right, former governor Gwendolyn Garcia and later former Cebu City mayor Michael Rama, were instrumental in the formation of the MCDCB, which is currently headed by Gov. Hilario Davide III. We know how Osmeña hates Garcia and Rama’s guts.

The MCDCB is actually more than the 13 local government units (LGUs)—including Cebu City-that compose it. Consider that its37-member Board consists not only of elected public officials but also regional directors of concerned national government agencies, and business and civil society leaders. That minimizes the politicking inherent in bodies dominated by politicians.

But the Board was constituted when Osmeña was still a private citizen, defeated by Rama in the 2013 elections. I think he does not see eye-to-eye with some Board members whom he perceives as friendly to his political rival. This is why he talks about having Cebu City join the MCDCB only if the positions are “elected.” He obviously wants a change in the Board’s composition and leadership.

I think it was in the ‘90s when the lobby to form a Metro Cebu-wide body similar to the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) surfaced. That was when Cebu City loomed very large over other LGUs in Metro Cebu and Osmeña was promoting his Big Brother program, portraying Cebu City as a big brother to everybody else. Thus, Osmeña opposed the formation of such a body if it is not dominated by Cebu City.

Osmeña’s stance created a deadlock. I remember one mayor ask if under such a body his town and the other smaller LGUs would have to content themselves with being the dumping area of Cebu City’s garbage.

But that was then. Metro Cebu now is a far different enclave. Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu cities have grown in spurts and economic development has spread in other Metro Cebu areas outside of Cebu City. The economic disparity between Cebu City and everybody else is no longer that wide. The statures, say, of the Mandaue mayor (currently Luigi Quisumbing) and the Lapu-Lapu mayor (currently Paz Radaza) have risen.

I am therefore sad at how Osmeña would valiantly cling to a different past. Consider this statement of his in a report written by Sunstar’s Rona Joyce Fernandez the other day: “If you will look in the last 30 years, all these Mega Cebu projects that are successful, I was the architect, the prime mover. We now have two Lapu-Lapu-Mandaue bridges, an airport, a traffic light system for Cebu and compactor trucks.”

Osmeña is a good local government executive, no doubt about that, but the gall of claiming to be the “architect” of Mega Cebu projects is amazing. Perhaps the MCDCB may be better off without him after all.