A matter of greed

Sisinio Andales and Alvin Arcilla are incumbent Cebu City councilors and have been in that position for three terms already. They were among those who were preventively suspended by the Office of the President in 2016 for giving themselves and City Hall employees P20,000 each after the magnitude 7.2 earthquake and super typhoon Yolanda hit the Visayas in 2013. They now think the suspension qualifies them to run for a fourth term.

What Andales and Arcilla are using to advance their intentions can be rightly called legal gobbledygook. It’s an act that usually has the wielder smiling to himself in amusement at what they apparently think is the public’s gullibility. Of course the public are not fooled because the lust for power is obvious.

Admittedly, the law can be stupid at times so leave that legal issue for the lawyers to debate on. Let’s talk about decency instead, qualities that are required of our leaders but which we usually do not get.

Or let us use simple logic, the Cebuano term of which is “tinamban.” Just because Andales and Arcilla were suspended for six months they now want to be allowed to serve for three years more, or beyond the three-term limit set by the law? Why not have them elected instead to a sixmonth term only?

The idea of term limits is to allow new leaders to reinvigorate the bureaucracy and make it dynamic. Leaders that are aggressive and creative in their younger years more often than not lose the dynamism after three terms. That does not take into consideration the repetitiveness that stunts the bureaucracy.

Which begs the question: What has Andales and Arcilla done in the city council in the past three terms that they should be given a fourth term? Did they do something to qualify them as God’s gift to the city council?

It has been a bland three terms for the two of them, so much so that when Mayor Tomas Osmeña looked for a city councilor to promote to the post of vice mayor they were not among those considered. So there.