Action not propaganda, please
A news report that saw print last Wednesday was an example of the brilliance of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña in propaganda. He captured our imagination when he claimed that businessmen in our city cheated the government of one billion pesos in unpaid business taxes. Then he rattled off the figure 10,000 as the number of businessmen operating in the city either without a mayor's permit or without paying taxes to the city.
Who will not be startled by the revelation the city has been cheated by thousands of businessmen of a huge sum of money? Wow, there are cheaters in our midst! Immediately Osmeña gets our complete attention. Who knows a neighbor who drives a flashy car is one of them? With the mayor's expose, our eyes are on him. Just as immediately, we push aside his own report, not very long ago, that a certain group of favored persons is paying some P400,000 a month to use a city-owned property in Barangay Kamagayan as a terminal, never mind if they breach the city ordinance regulating terminals. The brilliant move of the mayor is designed to cover a probable case for graft. In my mind, when he favored a private party to use a government property, he prejudiced the city. That act falls within the purview of the law on Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
Osmeña said the continuing monthly P400,000 remittance is a donation. When we rivets our eyes on the bomb that the city, under his leadership, has to run after businessmen-cheaters, we do not anymore compute that the "donation" has already grossed about P7,000,000 for terminal's operation of about one year and a half, nor inquire what has happened to the donated money. In Osmeña's telling us he will search for these tax evaders, we no longer question if the terminal operator ever paid donor's tax and what sanction, if any, is readied. Albeit late, let me ask the BIR to look into this purported donation. That brilliant Osmeña propaganda blinds our revenue officials.
I remember that as soon as Osmeña won as mayor, he also arrested our attention saying he would rescind the sale of some portions of the South Road Properties to three big investors. Some of my lawyer friends even speculated that the looming court action would be a difficult war. It was another brilliant propaganda stroke. Instead of awaiting his programs as a newly elected mayor, we were focused on what legal action would be taken against the buyers. The propaganda worked. While we waited for the rescission action, he escaped from his supposed duty to tell us what he planned for the city.
I consider the much-publicized fight of Osmeña for his BRT an adroit propaganda work. Because our eyes are glued to the raging debate on whether or not BRT is good, we lose sight of the fact that he failed to solve our daily traffic hell. Whenever he accuses his detractors of blocking the BRT, we forget to ask him to explain why since 1988 he failed to open new roads. Oh yes, I heard him falsely claim authorship of the extension of the Imus Street to General Maxilom Avenue, the fact is that this was a Gullas-Duterte project in 1983.
Let me go back to what I said at the outset of this column. Osmeña is a brilliant propaganda artist. In the blink of an eye, he can entertain us with earth-shaking ideas. But we need viable projects to collect our garbage, improve our traffic, and address the perils of climate change, not propaganda.
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