Sonny to oppose separation of Mandaue from 6th District

CEBU, Philippines - Toledo Mayor John Henry “Sonny” Osmeña will challenge up to the Supreme Court a possible decision of Congress to make Mandaue City a separate congressional district.

 Osmeña, a senator from 1971 to 1972, 1987 to 1995, and 1998 to 2004, said it is unconstitutional to have only the municipalities of Cordova and Consolacion in the Sixth District because they are not adjoining.

 Section 5(3) of Article VI of the 1987 Constitution provides that "each legislative district shall comprise, as far as practicable, contiguous, compact and adjacent territory. Each city with a population of at least two hundred fifty thousand, or each province, shall have at least one representative."

 Consolacion and Cordova are approximately 14 kilometers away from each other with the cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu between them. Lapu-Lapu City, now a lone district, used to be part of the Sixth District.

 As of the 2015 census, Consolacion has a population of 131, 528 while Cordova has 59,712 or a total of 191,240, short of the required 250,000 minimum population of a congressional district.

 Osmeña said he will lobby against the proposal at the Senate but if he fails, he would challenge it before the Supreme Court.

 Osmeña said his proposal ever since was to re-district the entire Province of Cebu.

It was Sixth District Rep. Jonas Cortes who filed House Bill No. 4117 to separate Mandaue City from Sixt District of the Province of Cebu and turn it into a new district.

 Moves began as early as 1992 but several local officials opposed the same.

 In 2011, then congressman and now Mandaue Mayor Gabriel Luigi Quisumbing filed a bill to this effect. Former congressman Efren Herrera also filed a similar bill in 2000. It was approved in the lower house but Osmeña opposed the same at the Senate.

 In pushing for its separation, Cortes, who was mayor of Mandaue from 2007 to 2016, said the city is a thriving first class city with a population of more than 365,144 individuals and is known as the "Industrial Heartland of Cebu."

 About 40 percent of Cebu's export companies are found in Mandaue and, being an industrial city, it is home to some of the country's biggest companies.

 Mandaue also accounts for 75 percent of the country's total exports in the furniture sector in the past two decades, making the city the furniture capital of the country. (FREEMAN)