EDITORIAL - BOPK killed by friendly fire

Former mayor Tomas Osmeña should not have been too quick in praising his BOPK party colleagues for recently returning the P20,000 financial assistance they got from the city government in December, along with other officials and employees, following a series of calamities that struck the country.

Praise like that is unmistakably laced with politics and therefore patently hollow and devoid of value. And it only calls attention to how, instead of being the principled officials he paints his BOPK colleagues to be, they can be worse than those who just kept the money and stayed mum about it.

Osmeña, in his haste to project his party allies as paragons of virtue, apparently forgot that it has been seven long months since these friends of his received the money. If they are truly what Osmeña now limply tries to project them to be, they should have returned it long ago or not accepted it in the first place.

In fact, they should not have voted to authorize the disbursement of the money, especially since they were disbursing it to their own selves, to the exclusion of the rest of the city residents who, it has to be inferred, must have suffered from the calamities more than they did.

And why did the BOPK colleagues of Osmeña return the money only now? Was it a case of a belated prick on the conscience? Or was it because they got sued for grave misconduct and grave abuse of authority and would not want that issue on their names now that elections are just around the corner?

If it is any consolation to those concerned, they have no legal liability to be afraid of. From the looks of it, everything had been done legally. The assistance was given with full authority from the council. And it was not without basis as even the president declared the whole country under a state of calamity.

It is on the morality issue that everyone gets snagged. But at least everyone gets snagged and not just the BOPK. Osmeña should just have left it at that. But now that he has tried to differentiate his BOPK from its political rivals, it is the BOPK that falls short when measured.

Why? Because by just keeping the money, the rivals of BOPK showed no pretense and exhibited no hypocrisy. The BOPK, on the other hand, by keeping the money for seven months and then quickly returning it only when somebody sued, only got shown up for being plastic, more so by Osmeña's self-congratulations.