Watch your back, mayor

A difficult question confronted me the other day. It had something to do with my column that was published on Friday, a day after its otherwise regular Thursday schedule. A reader asked me if I suggested that councilors Dave Tumulak and Jerry Guardo are some kind of modern-day Trojan horses. Believe me, I could not hide my amusement in his referral to Homer’s Iliad in so fascinating a manner that I lost track of his question. My mind travelled to Troy where one morning the army of King Menelaus, appeared to have stopped the siege, turned their backs on the war and left Troy with only a huge wooden horse behind. As Homer told us, the invaders hid in a cunningly-designed horse and quietly descended upon the unsuspecting Trojans, brutally annihilated them en route to claiming back the beauteous Helen.

The reader thought that my article implied Tumulak and Guardo to be tools of a modern Menelaus. He, in effect, volunteered to answer the question that I posed in my last column. I then asked: “why and for whom!”

If my reader was correct in his prognosis, Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella should understand or perhaps realize that he is on the receiving end of adverse public opinion, no thanks to the malfeasance of some people, not unlike Trojan horses, around him supposedly enjoying his trust and confidence. It is not easy as it oftentimes is hurtful to accept painful facts. Still, the truth will set him free. The mayor must admit that brickbats among ordinary mortals like me, alongside ponderous comments of serious opinion makers point to his seeming loss of control at City Hall. Even friendly news analysts cannot help but corroborate. Accordingly, memorandum and purchase orders are reportedly issued without his signature. Why, for instance, were mahogany trees in Barangay Guba cut without permission from DENR?

Everybody knows that cutting of trees is a no-no. In fact, the mayor set a tree-planting tone at the start of his term with an announced goal of planting 3,000,000 trees by the end of his administration. So, someone in high authoritative position must have given the order that slew the mayor’s policy. If Mayor Labella did not issue such directive, I assume it was Tumulak who commanded subordinate City Hall employees to fell the trees. After all, he was the one gloating about the need to establish a cemetery in that mountain barangay. Just look at the corresponding news and photo credits where the councilor appeared like the mayor. Yet, according to DENR pronouncements, Mayor Labella might be placed in hot water for that. He will be made to answer. What a Machiavellian strategy! This trickery, to me, was the act of a man in a Trojan horse posture and presumably he was acting upon a scheming King Menelaus. Whoever that king is, I have a vague idea.

My reader agreed with me that what Councilor Guardo did wasn’t unlike the work of Tumulak. That is why the label Trojan horses. By saying that he was only distributing the tuob kits to the barangays and that he had no hand in the purchase of the kits because that is the function of the executive, Guardo, in effect, put a halo on his crown and hinted that if there was anomaly in the acquisition of the kits, we should look in the direction of the mayor. My golly, what a devious scheme to put Labella in a queer situation!

The mayor has to watch his back. It will not always be easy identifying the opportunists and the treacherous breed from his true friends. But, because I suppose he is equipped to do so, he needs to reinvent his office starting with some serious house cleaning.