3 is not just a number
Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella, who must concede that the endorsement, push and support of President Duterte were a huge factor in his victory in the 2019 polls, is not like his benefactor. To me, they are two contrasting personalities in their approaches to sound governance. Our president always tries to appear to be a toughie even if he sprinkles his pronouncements with irreverent jokes while our mayor seems to tread, low-keyed, on what is essential. Thus, while I did not vote for Duterte in 2016, I cast my ballot for Labella in 2019.
In that frame of my mind, I immediately accepted the declaration of the mayor, about three weeks ago, that he would “plant and grow” three million trees in our city within three years of his administration. The dominant number in both the president’s campaign spiel and the mayor’s recent pronouncement is probably a meaningless coincidence but still it is rather discomforting. The president would eradicate the narcotics trade in three months, then later in three years and our mayor would cover our city with three million trees in three years.
I have heard that some people lean on this thing called numerology in their approaches to life. My faith in God is strong that I do not believe in any aspect of numerology. When numbers are woven into any discussion, (and they usually catch attention) I tend to use them as basis of evaluation. It is easy to understand that Mayor Labella got my attention when he unfolded his plan to “green the city”. I was very excited with his “tree planting, tree growing” project because no past city mayor factored trees in their programs of government. Tomas Osmeña was averse to such idea. Thru his underlings in the city council, he killed my proposed ordinance on planting trees thirty years ago!
Still, I had to grapple with Labella’s numbers. The mayor must have considered that the land area of Cebu City is about 33,000 hectares. He selected three sites where to plant trees. In an earlier article, I said that the launching of the project was massive. All city government employees were mobilized. Personnel of 80 barangays joined the activity. The private sector pitched in big numbers. But it was reported that all combined forces only succeeded to plant 50,000 trees. If that was the case, for this first year of administration, 950,000 trees have still to be planted. Since there are just about 8 months left in the mayor’s first year, and if we conduct monthly activity with a number of participants similar to the launching, we need to plant 120,000 trees every month. This herculean task is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
It is important for Mayor Labella to walk his talk to quash my fear that he only mimics some empty boasts of the president. But if it happens that an evaluation of the numbers he earlier released on this very laudable project shows that the goal set is quite stiff to accomplish, he has to be more candid than the president. We will still be happy if he says that he intends to “plant and grow” 1,000,000 trees in three years rather than 3,000,000.
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