Rama and Osmeña

MICHAEL Rama became Cebu City mayor with the help of Tomas Osmeña. That has been one of the refrains of the Bando Osmena-Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) campaign songs. But that is only one side of the CD. The other being that Osmeña also became the city’s south district congressman with the help of Rama, who can claim the south as his bailiwick.

That’s precisely the reason why even if Osmena obviously was not in the best of terms with Rama going into the 2010 elections, the then mayor stuck with his then vice mayor and supported the latter’s run for mayor. Conversely, that’s also the reason Rama refused to split with Osmeña even if the latter was already heaping insults at him. In that election, it was obvious that Osmeña and Rama needed each other.

That, to use a cliche, is water under the bridge. As Rama winds down his first three-year term as mayor, one may now ask how he fared in that post. Conversely, as Osmeña winds down his first (and only) three-year term as south district congressman, one may now ask how he fared in that post.

If you ask me, I would say that Rama is not as bad a mayor as Osmeña was in his last term in that City Hall post (2007 to 2010).

The BOPK spin in the current premature campaigning that it is launching is that Rama is an inferior administrator of the City than Osmeña. But that will only apply to the vintage Osmeña, or the Osmeña who took over City Hall as a brash young man. The older Osmeña was and still is weighed down by his arrogance and his quarrelsome ways. His obsession with the South Road Properties had also resulted in his failure to deliver basic services to the city’s residents.

Compare the city in 2010 and the city in 2012. That’s but more than two years since Rama took over and yet the difference is obvious. The city’s streets are better than the streets Osmeña left behind. The Cebu City Medical Center now is better than the decrepit one that Osmeña planned to sell to the highest bidder. The banks of creeks and the problematic drainage system, together with the Carbon market, are getting the attention

they deserve.

Of course, Rama’s obsession with vehicles purchase is a minus, but overall, he is doing good. And he could have done better had not the BOPK-aligned city councilors engaged in politicking early, obviously due to their party chief’s bidding.

As for Osmeña, the same baggage that weighed him down in his last term as mayor has also jeopardized his stint as south district congressman. He has been spending his time more in the city quarreling with Rama and finding ways to disrupt his rule. He rates high in the aspect of politicking and preparing for his run for mayor in 2013 but rates poorly in the aspect of legislative work. He used his pork barrel more to prop up his bid for mayor than to improve the lot of his constituents in the city’s south district.

One can safely say, then, that the south district was better off with Antonio Cuenco as congressman than with Osmeña now at its helm. Jonathan Guardo, who Osmeña defeated in the 2010 elections, would have fared better as congressman in that he would be a full-timer as lawmaker, unlike Osmeña who is a part-timer.

That’s why I hope south district constituents will choose well the man they will replace Osmeña with. To suffer for two straight congressional terms would already be sadistic.