Accomplishments

A short time ago, a bidding was held to contract out a public relations blitz that would hype the accomplishments of the Cebu provincial government under Junjun Davide. The bidding failed. The reason, as reported in the papers, was that there were no takers. Two seemingly interested parties present at the briefing submitted no bids, perhaps losing interest.

Why the loss of interest? Was the contract price of something like P3 million too low? I do not think so. Accomplishments speak for themselves. They do not need to be advertised. You do not need to spend a worthless centavo, much less three million pesos, for a p.r. firm to hype them.

Real accomplishments have a way of grabbing your attention. They leap out at you. They stand out like monuments in a landscape of the ordinary and commonplace. On the other hand, the surest way to highlight the lack of accomplishments is to call attention to their absence.

This is not to say that the tenure of Davide at the Capitol has been marked by an utter lack of any accomplishment. Surely he must have done something to fill up half a page in the annals of this great province’s long and storied history. But they must have been too few and insignificant to whip up the interest of two p.r. firms, even for three million pesos.

In a more subtle and inscrutable way, though, I think Davide fell victim to that sickness that often afflicts politicians, especially when taking power for the first in place of another. One of the very first official acts of Davide on assuming office vice Gwen Garcia was to dismantle Cebu TV, an information channel run by the provincial government during her time.

To me, Cebu TV provided a great service to both Cebuanos and other people, be they fellow Filipinos or foreigners. Many of the channel’s feature stories took you around the province, to places even Cebuanos themselves have never been, and meet people doing things often taken for granted as we go about our own “greater pursuits” in life.

Through Cebu TV we also learned so much about our history as it offered insights into our past and made up understand better who we are as a people. Unfortunately, this is not what Davide saw. He saw the channel only as a means to highlight the accomplishments of Gwen.

And that is truly sad because a real leader who wants only the best for his people would not mind any good done to them, even if by others, including political opponents. What is good for Cebuanos will always be good, no matter from whence come the goodness. Had Davide kept Cebu TV, he wouldn’t have to scramble now for a p.r. blitz to give substance to a vacuum.