Tomas threatens to go to court over move to halt BRT

CEBU, Philippines — Former Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña will go to court and assert property ownership over the land the where Capitol stands, if the Cebu Provincial Government would insist on the stoppage of ongoing civil works of the Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (CBRT).

He said his father, the late Sergio Osmeña, Jr. inherited “Cebu Heights”, or the midtown land from Juana Osmeña St. to Brgy. Guadalupe, and that it was this property that they used to fund their “political adventures”.

Osmeña is a multi-term Cebu City mayor. He had also served as Cebu City south district representative.

"Now, the Osmeña Blvd. is donated by my father, even the middle of the Capitol," he said.

The former mayor warned that should Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia and other Capitol officials insist on having the CBRT works along the stretch of Osmeña Blvd. stopped, he would tell them “it's not your property” and they would end up meeting in court.

“My father gave the province properties in exchange for other properties, which my father never got," Osmeña said.

He said that since the exchange was not consummated, the transfer of ownership to the Provincial Government was not valid.

“We will see each other in court. That is all part of the Cebu Heights. Cebu Heights is 100 percent owned by my father. Even Fuente Osmeña is owned by my father. I even have the title to it,” the former mayor said.

Osmeña said that even if they know they technically still owned the land where the boulevard is and where the Capitol stands, they never lifted a finger to claim even a single square meter, in the last 30 years.

"Now, I will," he said.

Last Tuesday, March 4, the Cebu Provincial Board (PB) passed on mass motion a resolution recommending the stoppage of the CBRT construction along Osmeña Blvd.

It came less than a week after the Cebu City Council likewise expressed a similar sentiment, concerned that the CBRT, particularly the station that would be built fronting the Capitol, would damage the building’s cultural and heritage value.

Last month, City Councilor James Anthony Cuenco, chairman of the City Council committee on transportation, also questioned the viability of continuing the CBRT and urged to suspend the civil works of Packages 1 and 2 pending the resolutions that lie within.

Osmeña said that the words “The government’s authority emanates from the people” engraved on the façade of the Capitol building do not speak about the kind of leadership the governor, the PB, and Cuenco had shown.

“That building is wrong. It (authority) should emanate from the governor, not the people of Cebu. We should tear down that building nalang. We don’t know how to follow it,” he said.

He said he hoped the Cebu leaders would be more polite to the national funders of the CBRT, saying that it took him 20 years to get the project he conceptualized going. — /RHM (FREEMAN)