SC turning towns into cities back and forth

If there is something terribly wrong with our Supreme Court these days, they have become so wishy-washy, so indecisive and so changeable. In a very close vote of 7-6, the Supreme Court ruled this week that 16 towns or municipalities can stay as cities. In Cebu, it means that the towns of Carcar, Bogo and Naga have become cities once more. I say once more because the Supreme Court earlier ruled that these towns did not meet all the legal requirements to become cities. Hmmm, have these requirements been met?

But these cities reverted to being towns filed their appeals to the Supreme Court and it has been a seesaw battle since May 2009 when the Supreme Court ruled against these towns. Then in August 2010 the SC once more said no to these towns. But in February 2011 the SC turned around and ruled that they can be cities. Now it’s the turn of the League of Cities to file their appeals and the latest we heard from the Supreme Court was that they upheld that these towns could be cities. Perhaps what these Supreme Court justices should have done is visit those towns because in all truth, they do not fit the description of what a city ought to be!

Gone are the days when we would go to the Supreme Court and get a final ruling that is truly final and executory! Perhaps our present crop of justices does not read the Bible or were not listening to last Sunday’s Gospel about the Sermon on the Mount which is found on Matt. 5:17-37 when our Lord Jesus Christ, at the end of his sermon, said, “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.”

The Supreme Court also did not consider the economic impact turning these towns into cities would do to all the cities in this country as it would undoubtedly cut their Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA) because there are now 16 more cities partaking of the same pie. The bottom line really here is that these towns asked their respective congressmen to turn them into cities, as their IRA would be much bigger than if they remain as municipalities.

In short... all this is a political accommodation by the Supreme Court, something that our nation needs like a hole in the head! I dare say that the criterion for a town to become a city has become too easy... someday we will no longer have towns in this country... only cities that still look like towns.

We wrote so many times before that one of the biggest problems we face in this country (aside from corruption in the government) is too much politics and let me say that this recent ruling by Supreme Court allowed our justices to walk into this political trap!

Let me point out a recent Cebu political history that happened during the elections of 2007, when a group of congressmen in Cebu province couldn’t win the governorship of Cebu. Hence they created a new strategy which we Cebuanos called “Sugbuak” where these last-term members of Congress came up with their own solution to create their own power bases, breaking the province of Cebu into four smaller provinces... Cebu del Norte, Cebu del Sur, Cebu Occidental and the present province of Cebu.

If we did not raise hell at this obvious but devious plan to dismember the province of Cebu, we would have become the laughingstock in the country where from being the number one province, we’d end up at the last among the 80 provinces of the Philippines, having four governors for Cebu province! That political move backfired against those last-term members of Congress who have ruled their respective districts for decades and all of them lost their seats in their districts.

Sugbuak (to break Cebu) became the battle cry for Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia (she narrowly won the governorship in the 2004 elections) during the 2007 elections where she created the One Cebu Party. Even the Catholic Church rallied against the evil plan of the Sugbuak group and after the counting was over, Gov. Gwen won a stunning victory with the largest margin ever had by a Cebu governor.

If Sugbuak won, they would have added three more provinces to the long list of provinces in this country, which would have diluted their respective IRAs. This is what is happening now when the Supreme Court allowed these 16 towns to become cities. As we said, our nation has become too politicized for our own good, what we need to do is reduce the number of politicians so there would be less corruption happening in our poor country.

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Here’s an announcement from my good friend Jerry Quibilan exhorting the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) alumni to attend the grand alumni homecoming on Feb. 24. For more details, log on to www.aimalumni.org. Unfortunately, I can’t attend this grand alumni homecoming.

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