How about a new east-west link?

In faithful observance of the Holy Week, I have decided not to express here my total dismay on the failure of President Rodrigo Duterte to do anything and everything legal to protest the military invasion (and physical usurpation) by Communist China of some islets within the territory of the Philippines located in the West Philippine Sea. Imagine, about 200 Chinese vessels have reportedly corralled the Philippine owned Julian Felipe reef and Duterte could only utter a muffled “concern”! To me this is impeachable but our Congress is so timid, perhaps cowed, by the president that no one is courageous enough to do what is unquestionably right. Anyway, I have written quite repeatedly on this issue already. And on this Maundy Thursday, it is enough for me to say that the Duterte’s failure to assert our territorial integrity against Red China is his worst sin to our republic.

Further, I have also decided not to write my disappointment on the monumental failure of the president in addressing COVID-19. DUTERTE is PALPAK according to a hashtag that was believed to have been drawn by insiders of government owned television network PTV. The fact that the Philippines, under his bloody regime, is the worst performer against the virus among the ASEAN countries is indubitably demonstrative of his incompetence. Indonesia, which has a population of over 270 million, has already vaccinated more than five million of its citizenry while out of the 110 million Filipinos, only half a million have, thus far, received anti-coronavirus inoculation. This glaring disproportion indicates what lawyers call res ipsa loquitor (the principle that the occurrence of accident implies negligence). Of course, our country, as miserably ruled by Duterte, is reportedly the last ASEAN nation to start vaccinating its people.

I hope, instead, to dwell on a dream of seeing a major highway constructed to connect Cebu City to Asturias on the western side of the island. It can be built to run side by side the former Gov. Lito Osmena’s Transcentral Highway. In all candidness, I have yet to see a government leader with the vision of Dwight Eisenhower who built the interstate but the optimist in me believes that some of our responsible officials will soon accomplish it.

Last Sunday afternoon, we drove to Taptap for a respite from boredom. Someone serves hot chocolate and delicious budbod there. The traffic was heavy and along the highway we saw several other small and medium-scale businesses operating. This pandemic has a weird way of changing people’s perspectives. The number of these emerging entrepreneurs is encouraging. On most of the then-vacant spaces now stand businesses establishments. They apparently have moved their operations from downtown Cebu to the Transcentral Highway, a phenomenon even former Gov. Lito might not have anticipated.

The sight was awesome, but, to me, it posed a worrisome spectrum. The number of vehicles traveling the stretch from Lahug to Gaas, Balamban has, in the last few months, exploded exponentially. Traffic, dictated by huge volume of cars, is much slower now than it used to be. In fact, when a road accident happened several days ago somewhere in Busay-Malubog area, traffic ground to a halt for about three to four hours. The repercussions were unimaginable.

There is this need to open a new highway across the mountains to link the eastern (Cebu City) and the western (Asturias) sides of the province. Consolacion, Lilo-an, Compostela, and even Danao City can access this road. I’m sure it will be costly but this project is imperative or some freak accident or natural calamities will isolate Cebu’s western board side.