A smoke signal revealed

In my youth, I saw a number of movies depicting the otherwise violent life of a young American nation, which was, ironically, also called the "old west" for reasons I have never come to know. Young nation, old west, what an undefined contradiction more than a plain oxymoron! My restless mind preferred incessant action flicks. In that period of the celluloid industry, action films were those whose plots riveted on the blue-shirted scouts, Jesse James and his ilk and the Apaches, (that's how I thought all the Indians were then called). My favorite stars were Audie Murphy, Henry Fonda or Glenn Ford, all of whom preceded Clint Eastwood's Django by more than a decade.

What attracted me were the stories where, in running gunbattles involving the Apaches, their numbers got decimated brutally. But, what mystified me even more the scenes between gunfights showing an indigenous form of Indian communication. If my memory is not betraying me now, they were called smoke signals, for lack of a more specific name. The films would invariably show Indians sending messages to their comrades in distant places thru a series of controlled smoke. I did not, by any means, understand how each billow of smoke would mean something to them. But, then again, I also could not figure out what the dit-da-dit of the Morse Code would represent. Just the same, as soon as smoke formations would appear, I would assume that they carried some messages.

Few weeks ago, City Hall sent what to me was some kind of a smoke signal. It did not know what it was, but I was sure it meant something. Out of the blue, and with apparent urgency, His Honor, Cebu City Mayor Tomas R. Osmeña talked of a land fill in barangay Kalunasan. Specifically, he mentioned a grand plan of his to transfer the garbage dump from its present site at Inayawan to this barangay situated along the hills separating the north and the south districts of this city. When asked why the officials of Barangay Kalunasan had no inkling of this move, the mayor was most candid. He said that no one knew anything about it because he just thought about it. That was it.

Not really! It was not that simple. Transferring a major facility from one place to another needed a serious and deliberate planning that his whimsical and arbitrary decision could never replace. The mayor should remember what he boasted of only few months ago. He claimed having engaged the services of a high-tech company that would convert the waste at Inayawan to enough electrical power as to serve the environmental needs of city hall and for which the city spent a sizeable sum. The mayor should also recall that huge amount of taxes have been allocated to make such a land fill answer the city's need for several years forward. His plan would mean that those expenditures were for nothing.

Mayor Osmeña did not tell us any reason predicating his smoke signal of a forthcoming grand environmental design. Well, if we would rely on his statement, he could not share with us anything because, as the mayor said, it just came to his mind. All he wanted us to know was that he planned on creating a landfill in Kalunasan and close that dump site at Inayawan. Period. He thought of projecting honesty in saying it was a new idea. In truth however, he was less honest in not truthfully revealing that there was something that prompted him to push that plan.

A later event would reveal the less candid personality of our mayor. It was reported that a lessee of the South Road Properties lodged a serious complain on the permeating foul odor emanating from the landfill. Considering that this outfit would cater to international market, such a smell would ruin its business potential. The problem had to be addressed immediately because it affected not only the lessee's interests but the marketability of the SRP itself. Moving the garbage dump to a very far place seemed to be a no-brainer of a solution. Unfortunately, it could also be pregnant with grave repercussions.