Nothing gets accomplished in 100 days

When I was still editor of this paper, one of the most crucial admonitions I would tell everyone in the editorial office was to always write, edit, or give titles to stories in a way that they do not get overtaken by events. You do not say President Duterte will arrive in Cebu at 1 p.m. because his plane might get delayed by an hour. Or he may not come at all. What you say is he is "expected" to arrive at such a time. That way, you are never wrong.

Also, in light of the practice common among VIPs to provide advance copies of their speeches to media, I always tell my reporters to check against delivery. Nothing is gained by being first if you turn out to getting it all wrong. This admonition is particularly helpful in cases where you have to deal with a speaker like Duterte, who hates to stay on script.

The reason I am recalling these admonitions is because my editorial juices have been stirred by the news that Cebu City mayor Edgardo Labella is about to give what is being described as a "privilege" speech to "flaunt" his "achievements" in his first 100 days in office. All those quotation marks you saw were purposely meant to drive home my incredulity at these events.

To me, in the context of public service, especially one that is clearly defined by a specific term of three years or 1,095 days, nothing gets accomplished in just 100 days. You can only start something in the first 100 days but you cannot start crowing about it. There are still 995 days left in a three-year term against which to check the results. Only then can anyone pass judgment on what has been done.

I can understand, of course, why many local officials like Labella are driven to make periodic reports like on their first 100 days in office. Local governance has, after all, incurred such a bad rap over the decades for lethargy, incompetence and even downright ignorance that well-meaning and dedicated public servants like Labella get compelled to distinguish themselves by periodically telling the public they are doing something.

If only for that, I appreciate the effort of Labella. But he shouldn't have gone to that extent. More so when he has to spend public money to highlight something that the public can smell right away from miles away for free. As my favorite line in a Bob Dylan song goes, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

In other words, it doesn't need a two-hour privilege speech (I do not know why they even call it a privilege speech; privilege speeches are often used to couch gripes, complaints and exposes, not accomplishments) to talk of what a mayor has done. If a mayor does good, then nobody complains and there is silence in the media. A mayor does bad, and he is the first person to know --- he gets kicked out of bed by Bobby Nalzaro.

If deeds speak louder than words, then I do not see why officials would feel remiss if they do not talk of their so-called accomplishments since that would just be them talking. But then again, this is perhaps what differentiates Man from God. When God made the world and everything in it, He toiled for six days without a word. On the seventh day, He rested. And that's it. Man gets past 100 out of 1,095 days, and, WTF, he calls for a fiesta.