Pacquiao museum, the greatest tall tale of all time

Had Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña been a fisherman, he sure just landed a very big one. He baited Cebu media with a yarn about building a P100 million museum for Filipino boxing hero Manny Pacquiao and every single one of them swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

Have the Cebu media been so mesmerized by the prospect that they forgot Cebu City does not even have the money to properly repair its dilapidated roads or replace the growing number of busted traffic lights?

Cebu City does not have the P100 million Osmeña is talking about. And even if it does, there is no way Osmeña, or whoever gets to sit at City Hall after the 2010 elections, is going to plow all that money into something as frivolous as a museum for Manny Pacquiao.

If the city does not even experience the slightest quiver to put up an honest-to-goodness museum despite being the seat of the country’s history and culture, why would its knees tremble to showcase a boxer who is not a Cebuano and does not call Cebu home?

The answer to that is simple. There is no such plan because such a plan is implausible and impractical. It is a big folly. And nobody knows that better than Osmeña himself. That is why he made no hesitation in announcing it. Because he knows it will never be.

If Osmeña had that kind of resolve and that kind of money, why, he would rather spend it on his real pet project, which is the SRP, and for which the city is paying millions every day to repay a loan that went into its construction, a loan that grows unrepayable each passing day.

Osmeña has a heavy burden carrying the SRP. The SRP is admittedly a fine project. But its conception is faulty. Otherwise it would have flown by now. But it refuses to fly after all these years. So there must be something wrong somewhere, a flaw that Osmeña needs to carry.

That is why, despite his questionable health, Osmeña refuses to give up power. Barred legally from another term as mayor, he is now seeking a seat in Congress, in the district where his SRP is situated.

Many years ago, Osmeña gave up what would have been a sure reelection to another term, stepping aside for his vice mayor so he may concentrate on attracting investors to Cebu, including what was then the incipient SRP.

But that was many years ago and the SRP still wouldn’t fly. Osmeña needs to buy more time. More pressingly, he needs to wield more power and influence. Without them, he could not guarantee life for his almost still-born baby.

And he doesn’t trust the man he must grudgingly relinquish power at City Hall to. So he needs to win political power and influence of his own. He needs to become a congressman. But to become one, he needs to convince Cebuanos he deserves their continued confidence.

But that is something not easy to do. Having held a position best remembered for what Cebuanos would rather forget — such as barricading the Sto. Niño Basilica or driving vendors away for being non-city residents — Osmeña needs to bring his fight away from the facts.

So he starts cooking up illusions, in the hope Cebuanos, caught up in the passions of the moment, would miss the point and take the bait. Sadly, of all those one would expect to be more circumspect and discerning, it had to be the Cebu media that would first swallow the bait.

Cebu City spending P100 million for a museum for Manny Pacquiao? At the SRP for which the city is still far from halfway to Pluto from fully paying? Bo ho ho! Dili lang kay nisakay. Nagpa-prunsit pa gyud!