Few issues on the Metro Cebu

Before anything else, let me thank the city administration of His Honor, Mayor Michael L. Rama, for the quick response in putting up streetlights on that portion of F. Cabahug Street, Barangay Kasambagan, Cebu City, which I described last Sunday, in this column, as probably, the darkest spot in the city. The very evening when my article appeared, there was another pedestrian who got injured in a vehicular accident in the very place subject of my write up. I am sure my neighbors there felt relieved with the new mercury vapor lamps installed as they should be hoping that with this added peace and order feature, there shall be fewer occurrences of mishaps and undesirable incidents.

Of late, more than ever, the concept of a metropolitan Cebu has attracted the attention of our leaders. For sure, the idea is ageold but the approaches are somewhat getting novel and vibrant. Per newspaper reports, the sitting mayor and his predecessor have taken different positions. I like to believe that their espousal of nonallied political affiliations is not the basis of their diversity of opinion. Indeed, they do not share similar paradigms, even if both are possibly motivated by unselfish visions. Particularly, this is on the issue of the representation of the city in the board or council of governors that may compose the administering body of the Metropolitan Cebu.

If a Metro Cebu were created today, comprising of say, Danao City in the north thru Carcar City in the south, what role would each local government unit do? Or what kind of participation would each give? And, how much would each chip in to make it functional?

These must be among the more obvious, though not necessarily the more fundamental considerations that the Honorable Cebu City South District Congressman Tomas R. Osmeña, viewed when he opined that Cebu City should not be treated as equal to the other local government units in the metropolitan organization. And he is right! In international law parlance, an organization of that kind of mixed membership makes Cebu City primus inter pares, to say the least.

The difficulty which Rep. Osmeña correctly harbors in looking at a metropolitan model is anchored on the fact that Cebu City must admittedly be its biggest player. Precisely, it shall be called Metro Cebu because almost everything radiates from the hub and this center is, perforce, Cebu City. Any and all programs have got to consider first and foremost, this city. To drive this point home, how can planners draw a development plan with say Minglanilla as the primary point of concern?

So, the first organizational problem is creating an administrative body that approximates, as closely as possible, the number of constituencies in terms of warm bodies. In the mind of the south district lawmaker, Cebu City cannot just have the same one vote, similar to say Lilo-an, in the council where decisions are made. The legislator feels that that is not realistic and I agree with him. True, they are local governments, but representation being the essence of a democracy, this city, with a voting strength nearing half a million, should have more constituents to address than, Lilo-an in our example. The bottom line is, how could a representative of that town, (no offense meant, here) possess similar punch to the representative of this city? The statute that seeks to create this metropolitan area has to meet that concern firstly.

The second issue to anticipate is this: How may the law creating this metro body achieve fairness in the allocation of available resources for projects? They need to establish perhaps, a list of priorities and then, adopt an acceptable formula in the distribution of largesse. Even that issue is ticklish but they should have a strategy whereby all of the component parts of the metropolitan unit receive reasonably fair amounts of allocable funds.

The good thing is that our leaders seem to dwell on this plan more seriously. Starting with the justifiable apprehensions of Cong. Osmeña, the politicians working out this baby may just be able to iron the kinks and finally decide whether the Metropolitan Cebu concept is a workable model and try it out or totally forget about it.

‘The good thing is that our leaders seem to dwell on this plan more seriously.’