Cebu City Councilor Alvin Dizon has resigned as chairman of the committee on housing after the council failed to override a veto against a proposed ordinance he authored that would have granted a one-year moratorium on demolitions of illegal structures on public land. It is good that he did. His resignation demonstrates just how myopic his appreciation is of the nature of his job as chairman of the committee on housing.
The committee on housing has very broad responsibilities. It answers to the housing concerns of every Cebu City resident, not just to the needs of the homeless who he obviously tried to favor with his ordinance by seeking to protect them, at least for a year, wherever they may have chosen to set up abode, mindless of the fact that where they are could also have an impact on the right of others to be secure in their own dwellings.
That Dizon has a heart for the poor is admirable. But he is a city councilor for all. A moratorium on demolitions of illegal structures, especially those that are obstructing natural waterways, would have essentially crippled not just the city government, but his own committee as well, to pursue a mandate to look after the welfare and interests of all, and not just a specific sector.
Dizon, who rode to the City Council on the wheels of support from the urban sector, cannot be faulted for trying to tap the same support from that sector once more. But his obligations as an incumbent official are no longer the same as when he was an outsider seeking in. As an incumbent official, and as chairman of the city housing committee, his obligation is now to all city residents, regardless of whether they live in clapboard dwellings or in gated millionaire communities.
Dizon actually did his job by filing the ordinance. He owed that ordinance to a part of his constituency. By resigning, however, it showed a partiality to that part of his constituency, to the detriment of all the other parts that make up the rest of that constituency, that huge remainder that he can never dissociate from on account of his mandate that is not sector-based but city-wide.
Had Dizon been a mere sectoral representative, such as of the urban poor sector, he probably would have been obliged to resign if he truly felt that bad about not have seen a pet measure through the legislature. But he is not an urban poor representative. He is a city councilor elected at large and therefore a representative of everyone.
Had he appreciated that fact, he could have accepted with dignity and grace the veto by Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella, the acting mayor at the time of the voting. He could have seen that as much as Labella may have empathized with the urban poor, he had a far greater responsibility to the greater number and therefore had to act accordingly. The actions of Labella and Dizon clearly show who understands his job better. By resigning Dizon gave up the opportunity to serve the poor in other ways.