EDITORIAL - When law and reason flee, try hubris

Things are getting to be really interesting. The Regional Trial Court has stopped Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña from closing any Banco de Oro branch in the city as he had threatened. Accusing some BDO branches of not paying City Hall the correct taxes, Osmeña has sat on the banks' applications for renewal of permits, prompting them to go to court. Now the court has spoken, so let's see how the mayor wriggles out of the situation.

But the BDO issue is just part of a larger confrontation Osmeña has with the giant SM group that owns the bank. Osmeña is mad at SM, and at Ayala and Filinvest as well, for buying large tracts of land at the city-owned South Road Properties during the time of his predecessor Mike Rama despite his cautioning them not to do so. When Osmeña regained power, he started getting hot on those who crossed him.

SM has chosen to fight and has won the first round. Filinvest backed out of the sale. Ayala? That remains to be seen. But for sure Osmeña is not going to let things get the better of him. Always intransigent, Osmeña is a man who believes only his rules apply. Look at the case of a V-Hire terminal he allowed to operate at the old Citicenter Complex in Barangay Kamagayan. He is now in more trouble because of it.

An opposition councilor, Raymond Garcia, says the operation of the terminal is illegal and has sued the mayor. According to Garcia, the terminal's operation is in violation of City Ordinance 1958, one of whose provisions prohibits the establishment of a terminal or similar facility that is within a 300-meter radius from a city block that includes the central downtown area. Such a terminal or like facility cannot also be located near schools, churches and hospitals.

That ordinance went into effect when the mayor at the time signed it following its passage at the city council. And who was the mayor at the time? Yes, it was Osmeña. But Osmeña is not about to accept getting caught in a contradiction. He insists the operation of the terminal at Citicenter is only experimental. That excuse, however, is as limp as limp excuses go. An experiment exempts no one from coverage of a law, especially if that same law provides no such exemption.

As an experiment for what, only Osmeña knows. Nevertheless, he is using the experiment yarn to reject a city council vote of 8-7 recommending its closure. And there is more to miff Osmeña in that vote. His party lost the vote despite recently gaining the majority in the council with the defection of three councilors from the opposition. Backed into a corner, he is now threatening to sue Rama for also allowing a similar terminal at Compania Maritima — as if two wrongs can make a right.