Cebu City needs a new kind of leadership

I’m glad The FREEMAN wrote an editorial about former Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama entitled “Rama is not a drug addict but he needs presidential exoneration.” Part of the editorial read: “As expected, former Cebu City mayor Michael Rama has been found negative for drug use following a test last week, a positive development in his effort to clear his name of allegations he was involved in illegal drugs.”

With that said, now there is only one urgent thing for Mike Rama to hurdle, and that’s for the president to tell Cebuanos who are going to vote for Mike Rama whether or not he is cleared as a drug protector. The president ought to “gift” the Cebuanos with the truth because we voted him president because we believe in him. We hope that President Duterte can resolve this issue before the deadline of the filing of certificates of candidacy (COC).

Still on election-related issues, I didn’t know that Cebu City now has 43,000 new voters. Based on their previous Comelec data, there were 360,421 registered voters in the south district in the last barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections. South District Election Officer Edwin Cadungog cannot yet give the definite number of registered voters for the upcoming midterm polls since they have to do cleansing.

Meanwhile, Cebu City North District, Election Officer Marchel Sarno said they have tallied at least 20,462 additional registrants. According to their last count North district’s existing voters totaled 307,474. Just like Cadungog, Sarno cannot mention the total number of north district registered voters for the 2019 midterm polls because they have to countercheck their records. We also learned that there are 14,000 new voters in Lapu-Lapu City.

With the filing of COCs getting nearer, the election officers have reminded politicians to comply with the necessary requirements mandated under the law. They are talking about Certification of Nomination and Acceptance from their political party with notarization and documentary stamps, and their Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth, things that often bring you more trouble than you can expect

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The price of Brent crude touched its highest level since November 2014, sending jitters across the globe. People expect that the Duterte administration will help reduce gasoline pump prices if they act on the automatic suspension of the fuel excise tax imposed under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Law. But it seems that this is not happening soon.

Benchmark Brent was up 16 cents at $82.89 a barrel early yesterday, after touching $83.32, the highest level in almost four years. US light crude was up four cents at $73.29. Certainly this can be traced to the troubles in Yemen and in Syria.

With yesterday’s price for a barrel of oil reaching record highs, the only lasting solution to our woes is find out the best battery-powered motorcycle, bicycle, or car your money can buy. The only positive is that this time around it is the United States of America that is considered the biggest oil producing country in the world.

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I don’t know what is happening here in Cebu, but in the late afternoon of Monday my friends posted in their Facebook page the photo of a little child probably not more than a year old lying dead at the South Reclamation Road. Since my friends only took a photo, they couldn’t answer my queries whether the poor child fell from a vehicle or crossed the road and was stuck by a vehicle. Perhaps the bigger question I asked is where are the parents of the poor child? No one could answer my queries.

I have seen so many bad things happening in Cebu City. But this was the first time that I saw a poor child dead on the road. If you ask me, this should never have happened in our beloved Cebu City. If only our political leaders got together to make Cebu City safe again! I dare say that it is high time to put in a new leadership in Cebu City, a leadership that doesn’t care about political issues but find social issues more important than anything else! This is what Cebu needs!

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