On Talisay Cityhood Nullification Case: Cebu City government files argument on the case to Court of Appeals

The Cebu City government submitted its memorandum to convince the Court of Appeals to nullify the law converting Talisay from a municipality to a city.

In its 18-page memorandum, Cebu City reiterated how Talisay allegedly violated the requirements of conversion to a city, as it asked the CA to stop the Department of Budget and Management from releasing the internal revenue allotment to Talisay as a chartered city.

Cebu City said the main issue is whether Talisay complied with the minimum requirement of 150,000 population at the time of the enactment of Republic Act 8979, the law converting Talisay into a city.

"Owing to its land area limitation, the proponent for the conversion of Talisay is left with no option but to choose income and population criteria as the standards for measuring its eligibility for conversion into a city. It is therefore quite inaccurate to suppose that all that Talisay has to comply is the income requirement and nothing else," Cebu City argued.

Rep. Eduardo Gullas, proponent of RA 8979, has presented to the House committee on local governments a letter signed by National Statistics Office administrator Tomas Africa dated January 14, 2000 showing that Talisay has more than the minimum requirement of 150,000 residents.

But Cebu City contended that the 2000 census of population and housing, conducted by the NSO, showed that Talisay's population was still 148,110 residents, as of May 1, 2000, which means that Talisay came up short of 1,890 residents as the law required at the time.

It further said, "This requirement is clear and unambiguous. It is also inflexible and does not require the exercise of discretion as the law mandates that the determination should be based on verifiable data." - Joeberth M. Ocao