Opinion

Letter to the Editor — Garcia's reaction to Max Soliven's column

November 9, 2006 | 12:00am

Mr. Max Soliven
Publisher
Philippine Star

This is in reaction to your series of columns on the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC), the designated venue for most of the activities in the upcoming ASEAN Summit in December.

First of all, we respect your status as an "Honorary Citizen of Cebu", although we believe that the honor was conferred by the City of Cebu, and should be strictly construed within city limits.

More importantly, however, we are hoping that you would, as a good citizen and a legendary journalist, take that honorific title a step further, by actually coming to Cebu, and seeing for yourself the things of which you write so eloquently, but less than factually.

To begin with, there is no such thing as an P800-million budget for the CICC. The appropriation for the facility is P450 million and all existing contracts to complete it in time for the ASEAN Summit are well within that budget. The Province of Cebu will not spend P800 million, and had you represented that news article as faithfully as you should have, you would have let your readers know that I, as spokesman of the Governor (who was then in China) said as much.

The Governor has held on to every peso of that budget so tightly you might want to consider making her an honorary Ilocano.

Secondly, the Governor has made it clear that Cebu will not ask, nor will Cebu take, a single centavo from the National Government to complete the CICC, and Cebuanos resent your insinuation that we might.

You will be happy to know that the province that lies outside the city of which you are an honorary citizen always has been financially independent of the National Government, not dependent even on its Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA). We have a P2 billion surplus and we have zero - I repeat - zero debt.

However lowly you might think of provinces over there at Imperial Manila, the provinces are not beggars who scramble for your crumbs at every opportunity. On the contrary, Cebu is doing its share to help the National Government in this historic undertaking, so that all of us Filipinos - including you - may share in the glory of its success, without you having to part with your coffee money.

Thirdly, we are perplexed - and, considering your reputation as a journalist, aghast - that you cavalierly concluded that the CICC is somehow structurally unsound or unsafe, without anything to prop up your claim, except the polished arms of your well-worn armchair. Not a single engineer, much less, expert, has ever questioned the integrity, soundness and safety of the CICC, and I think it is the height of irresponsibility to suggest otherwise and to paint doomsday scenarios of roofs falling over the heads of ASEAN heads of state, without any technical basis.

The only person to have so suggested was an old, defeated and discredited Cebuano politician, who is dying - among other things - to make a comeback. When asked his source, he merely quoted a "little bird".

Being a columnist does not make you an expert on columns of an altogether different kind.

Which brings us, finally, to the question of who fed you the inaccurate information - or as a local daily put it, "garbage" - regarding the CICC and the Governor's person. In your column, you mention broadcaster Choy Torralba. On radio this morning, however, he flatly denied being your source, and pointed to Mr. Bobit Avila. Mr. Avila, however, denies this, and says it was Choy Torralba.

Considering their denials, we will leave Messrs. Torralba and Avila alone. Perhaps it was, indeed, another source, considering that your line of attack hews closely to that of that old politician. You even mentioned the Governor's stint in Ormoc City, and we do not recall your ever having been there, before or after the flood, to see the changes that happened since that stint.

But perhaps the dead giveaway was your getting involved in Mandaue City politics, with an attack on Mayor Teddy Ouano, and glowing words for his political detractor, Mr. Luigi Quisumbing, and your familiarity with the latter's lineage.

We wish merely to underscore the need - even, or especially more so with veteran journalists - to check sources and facts. And if it is not too much to ask, to get the other side, before launching into a wild attack - complete with roofs falling over heads of hapless Asians - on the mere say-so of an old politico with a predilection for little birds, and what they say.

Pablo John Garcia
Consultant on Information, Organization and Management
Province of Cebu