“Black as the pit from pole to pole”

During the May 2007 electoral campaigns, the administration of His Honor, Cebu City Mayor Tomas R. Osmeña, repeated its previous announcements that several business interests were going to buy portions of the South Reclamation Area. According to that press statement, the city was on the brink of earning more than enough money to pay the very loan obligation Mayor Osmeña, incurred for us to pursue this project.

That announcement was viewed from at least two different perspectives. On one hand, it was a legitimate news story even if it was, at the same time, a political propaganda. As such, it was intended to excite us, Cebuano voters, into thinking that a turnaround of the project was eminent. It did not matter that, in the process, it was designed to make us forget who was responsible for the oppressive burden arising from that huge indebtedness.  Anyway, in the mind of many public relations practitioners, the gimmick was available and the city administration cannot be faulted for using it.

On the other hand, the parties opposed to the administration held no punches. It served them a platform to launch their linguistic firepower from. In each opportunity, they were not wanting in eloquence in telling us that there was not much substance to the oft-repeated announcement. Their assertion that the city administration’s story was rather an empty boast got a boost when one of the alleged locators, in words carefully designed not to incur the ire of a perceptively arrogant mayor, in effect denied the city’s humbug.

In any case, the results of the elections somehow indicated to us whose side of the conflicting claims the voters believed in.

When December came, Mayor Osmeña, expected that someone would ask what happened to the announced deals on the south reclamation. Our mayor was quick to the draw. Before anyone could prepare any summary on what 2007 was, the city administration brought forth that inevitable topic. Without any reservation, it claimed that before the end of the year 2007, the city was going to conclude sales of large portions of the reclaimed land.

However, the city wanted to put a cap on the announcement. When we attempted to get detailed information of the supposed transactions, the mayor clamped down on the story. Claiming that it was not good to let us know the details of the projected deals because he was in a critical stage of negotiation, he literally threw us into the dark. I could not help compare the darkness with a line of a poem reading “black as the pit from pole to pole”.

Back off! And we, I mean, the people, did. We held our tongue, kept silent and poked no nose around. The vice mayor too, probably, fell asleep. He did not ask any relevant question. Or, would it be more accurate to say that the vice mayor, licking the _ of the boss, did not tell us what he knew? In the same vein, our city councilors, fearful of adverse political backlash should they refuse to toe the line, individually zipped their mouths.

There is this thing called transparency. Basically, transparency prevents what secrecy promotes --under-the-table deals. The lawyers in the city government should tell Mayor Osmeña that he violated the spirit behind the demands of transparency in deciding to keep private his transactions involving public property. With the mayor imposing black-out on the deals, we shudder at the thought that unseen corrupt hands could prompt him into signing transactions which otherwise should have been rejected.

Anyway, we are now in 2008. If the city leadership were honest in their claims that before 2007 ended, south reclaimed lands would have been sold, then we should have already made such deals. At the very least, for reasons of transparency, we should be told who made such acquisitions and for how much. If no real property had, in fact, been disposed of, then, we were all taken for a ride with someone peddling lies to us.