Editorial - The real test

The bigger fiasco in Mayor Michael Rama’s budget is not that it was slashed in half by the city council but that it was slashed in accordance with the orchestrations of Tomas Osmeña. Now Rama knows for certain how strong the grip Osmeña has on the city councilors.

The beauty of Osmeña’s manipulation of the city council is that he was able to find a plausible excuse to scuttle the budget of Rama: It was simply too big a budget (double that of the previous year) for which Rama failed to clearly identify the revenue sources.

But of course anyone bent on finding something wrong with anything will likely find it. And anyone caught in an unexpected situation will likely find it difficult to extricate himself in a way that would otherwise be easy had he foreseen the difficulty.

That was the story of this budget — Osmeña finding a plausible reason to assail it, and Rama caught unprepared for the challenge. And the councilors? Well, they simply did the bidding of Osmeña. Before Osmeña came swaggering in, the budget probably didn’t ring any bell.

So forget the amount of the budget because it really does not matter. The fact that it is still a wee bit bigger than last year should ensure that the city can get by. It is not really as if Rama lost and arm and a leg on this one.

The real “waker-upper” is how Osmeña, despite being a City Hall outsider, can still push his weight around where it really matters in the seat of power. It is as if he never really left. And that should be the big headache that Rama needs to devote more time massaging.

And what a big headache it is. A throbbing dilemma in fact. Here is the problem: Most Cebuanos probably revile Osmeña behind his back. Many hate the arrogant ... Yet Cebuanos appear to hate leaders without balls even more. 

Judging by experience, it seems that Cebuanos can hate Osmeña for the entire three years of his term. But on the one crucial day when they vote for their next leader, it seems that they cannot bring themselves to vote for a soft-spoken and easy-to-get-along guy.

This is the paradox of Osmeña that those seeking to put him in his proper place need to fix and solve before even attempting a face-off. So, today, it is the budget. That is pablum despite how the media tried to play it up. The real test for Rama is 2013.