Editorial: The council & the budget
MEMBERS of the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) in the Cebu City Council did it again yesterday, using their number to “kill” the attempt of Councilor Gerardo Carillo to reopen the deliberation on the proposed P2.8-billion Supplemental Budget (SB) 1 that they suspended last week.
Money from SB 1 could have been used for the full payment of what the city government still owes the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) for the money borrowed to fund the south reclamation project (now the South Road Properties or SRP), additional P87 million for garbage collection and disposal, and P77 million for City Hall employees’ productivity enhancement incentive.
The BOPK councilors had suspended deliberation on SB 1 after a certain Romulo Torres went to court to prevent the City Government from spending the P8.3 billion down payment it received for the sale of SRP lots. Money for SB 1 is supposed to be sourced from the P8.3 billion.
In what looked like a harbinger of things to come during the campaign period for the May 2016 elections, a rally attended by an estimated 1,000 City Hall employees and barangay workers was held while the City Council deliberated on Carillo’s motion. Garbage trucks full of collected trash were also placed in the vicinity.
It now looks like Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama and Team Rama are making political capital out of the obstructionist tendencies of the majority bloc in the City Council. Whether this will result in the capturing by Team Rama of the City Council majority after next year’s elections remains to be seen.
One consolation for the BOPK councilors is that even if they also played obstructionists during Rama’s first term, they still retained control of the City Council even if Rama got reelected as mayor in 2013. But can they survive the wrath of the city’s constituents this time around?
Or to put it in another way, will the claim made by Carillo in his privilege speech yesterday connect with the city’s electorate? He said: “I empathize with our people who express frustration and are discouraged by our politics... The people do not need puppets who reiterate partisan interests. They deserve good governance.”