When Cebu City councilor David Tumulak announced he was leaving his party Team Rama to become an independent member of the council, one newspaper described the announcement as having caused shock waves. That is a big ha ha. Tumulak leaving a party causing shock waves? Since when has anything Tumulak, or any other councilor in the city has done, for that matter, caused any shock waves?
Members of the city council, contrary to expectations, Cebu City being the second most important city in the Philippines, have always acted pretty predictably. Name, for example, any legislation of note that the city council has crafted over the past several years. Absolutely nothing. The city council, instead, has become the arena where the political giant of the moment wages his wars against whoever is also his enemy of the moment. And where is the shock value in that?
Where the individual councilor happens to be allied, there his everything goes - his energies, his efforts, his intellect (if he has any), even his integrity (again, if he has any). There is never any initiative born of an idea or an advocacy into which has been poured hours of research, volumes of data, thousands of inputs and countless attempts at bipartisan support to push legislation through.
Cebuanos, among the most-educated, hard-working, innovative and resilient Filipinos in the country, are instead being insulted, election after election, by representations that do nothing but cut, undermine, block, reject, and otherwise prevent anything from happening that would have ultimately be for the finer interest of both public service and legislation itself.
The country has just had another election. New sets of public officials assumed office across the country last June 30. That means they have been in office for almost two months already. But has anything moved at all in Cebu City? If at all, that was the only thing that stirred the stagnant humid air - the departure of Tumulak from Team Rama.
As if to spice the non-event, Tumulak said he will not be moving over to the rival BOPK, from where he originally came (you see?). Tumulak said he will just be an independent. That is, of course, another big ha ha. There are no independents in this world, only in Hell, where the hottest seats have been reserved, or so someone famous once said.
To prove the fallacy of independence, Tumulak made his announcement to bolt right after meeting privately with Margot, wife of Mayor Tomas Osmeña. Tumulak said he just wanted to find out from Margot (Tomas was in Manila at the time) what plans Tomas might have that he can support. That is telling the educated Cebuanos that he just cannot wait for Tomas to come back and get it straight from the horse's mouth. That deserved a final ha ha. So what else is shocking? We cannot wait to tremble.