EDITORIAL - Stirring up trouble for nothing

If it aint broke, don't fix it. Let sleeping dogs lie. These are the more famous two admonitions about letting things be, about not disturbing the status quo. And they come to mind in light of a lawsuit filed by former mayor Tomas Osmeña against Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama. The lawsuit was prompted by a plan of the city government to convert the Doña Pepang Cemetery into a park or something. The cemetery houses the Osmeña mausoleum, burial site of Osmeña's departed elders.

 The land on which the cemetery is located used to be owned by the Archdiocese of Cebu, which has, or used to have, vast landholdings in Cebu known as the friar lands, pieces of property once owned by the Roman Catholic Church dating back to the days of Spanish colonization. The archdiocese recently donated this particular land to the city and among the conditions for the donation was for it to be developed as a means to preserve its historical importance.

The condition did not specify a time for the city to develop the area. There is a fair chance, therefore, that had the city decided to develop the area at some other time and not during the incumbency of Rama, Osmeña might not have objected to the plan. That is not a certainty, of course, but it is a possibility worth considering.

 Osmeña and Rama, you see, are not exactly on the best of terms. To put it bluntly, they are the most bitter of enemies, as what usually happens to those who used to be the best of friends. Thus, even if the plan did not actually involve something very close to the heart of Osmeña, it would not be farfetched for Osmeña to try and do something just to antagonize Rama. So how much more if it involved an Osmeña ancestral resting place.

The question may therefore be asked -- why on earth did Rama and the city government decide to do the developing now? Is the development part of some great and grandiose plan whose failure or success depended on whether the particular piece of land was developed or not? Will the progress of Cebu City and the future of its citizens rise or fall on such development?

Clearly the answer to each of the above questions is no. For all its historical significance, whether to one family or to the entire city, the property is actually too small and too insignificant to matter in whatever great and grandiose plan the city might have at the moment. The city and its people can go on with their business with or without the cemetery keeping in step.

In other words, why did the city have to develop the lot when there is no crying need for it. The provisions in the donation itself did not say it has to be developed at this particular time. There being none, is there instead an attempt to rile Osmeña, or to spite him. As far as their enmity goes, nobody really gives a damn who riles who. But if such riling becomes a distraction, especially if for nothing, such nonsense better be buried along with the dead.