Double whammy against the mayor's leadership

The first time I heard people mention the term double whammy, I thought they referred to a naval encounter whereby a surface ship got hit by two torpedoes launched from an enemy submarine. Then, when I realized that economists, not military strategists, were working around the term, I had to struggle for its meaning. From whatever little learning I gathered, I discovered that double whammy referred to a situation when two successive (or even simultaneous) events caused a serious change on the lifestyle, if not the economic stability, of a people.

If I may be allowed to corrupt the usage of the term, let me say that in our city, two chronicled events tended to inflict double whammy on the administration of His Honor, Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama. These were the separate pronouncements of Councilor Jose Daluz and Treasurer Ofelia Oliva. While they appeared to be disjointed because they were uttered days apart from each other, I sensed that they were orchestrated to cause serious doubts on our mayor's capability to lead.

   Councilor Daluz planned that the billions of pesos the city expected to generate from the sales of the lots of the south Road Property (SRP) would be placed in a trust fund. True to the nature of a trust fund, the announced objective of the city legislator was to use all such money exclusively for the development of the SRP. In his concept not a single centavo could be ploughed to any project outside of the SRP.

   Since I do not wish to drag anyone into my disappointment, let me speak in my lonesome. I thought that the Daluz plan was so very unfair to me. The councilor forgot the legal theory that I contributed my few centavos (bisag centavos ra intawon, ug dili pesos) to the first few installment payments given by the city for the loan that was used to bring about the reclamation. Those installments in hundreds of million pesos were paid out of the taxes collected from every city resident including my few centavos.

   I hope to remind the councilor that for many years, the delivery, by the city, of basic services, was adversely affected. We did not have enough funds because our taxes were prioritized to paying the SRP loan amortizations. What wrong did we do that when the city would earn billions of pesos selling the lots in SRP, all of that money would exclusively be used for SRP? Why, for example, could we not allocate few thousand pesos from the sales proceeds to repair a very bad road leading to Sitio Baugo in Barangay Paril, whose residents are non SRP users?

   Even as I struggled for any rationale of the Daluz concept, the second event came. Cebu City Treasurer Ofelia Oliva was attributed to be the source of another news. I must accept that age is affecting my sense of adventure because I found the Oliva formula disturbing. The report said that our city planned to avail of loans offered by a syndicate of banks to pay off our SRP debt! In other words, to pay off the SRP debt, we shall incur another debt! And the justification is that we could save on unspecified unwanted charges.

  If this Oliva scheme pushes thru, we the city residents will continue to pay our SRP loan from our own pockets. We will use the city's general funds, our taxes, for this purpose. And yet, if the Daluz concept materializes, whatever money we earn from selling the SRP lots will be exclusively used for SRP and nothing would be spared for the benefit of the other parts of the city.

   But, our mayor did not announce these two separate plans. It was not Mayor Rama who spelled out these detrimental policy declarations. His subordinates did. Councilor Daluz and Treasurer Oliva, without getting the approval of the mayor, took the matter into their own hands. Since when has the hierarchy of our city's leadership been so changed that policy determinations are made, not by the chief executive, but by his subordinates?

Mayor Rama should be on the lookout for some possible acts of sabotage like these twin moves. I surmise that the plans of Councilor Daluz and Treasurer Oliva will bring difficulties on the part of city residents. If that should happen, then the mayor shall bear the brunt of losing the confidence of his people.