The other day, I heard of a bit of news that somehow elicited a smile on my face. It was about a report that we Cebuanos are supposed to applaud. Our city council was set to tackle yesterday, in its regular session, the issue of requesting the waiver of the payment of the guarantee fee, a component financial liability embedded in the loan which the city negotiated to fund its south reclamation project.
Before starting to write this article, I waited from my source at the city hall to confirm whether the sanggunian passed the proposed measure. Since no confirmation reached my end, and my deadline for this write up came, I assume here, for the purpose of this column, that the council fell into the design under the cover that what they did was good for the city and that is why I said above that a smile registered on my face.
Our honorable local legislators held a special session early this week to take another look at the loan agreement the city obtained, about two decades ago, from a foreign funding source to underwrite what is now known as the South Road Properties. The executive session was called at the instance of, who else, but Hon. Margarita V. Osmeña, Cebu City South District councilor. In the flux of information, the councilors were made to understand that among the monetary obligations the city bound to pay, was a guarantee fee. The amount has run into millions and if there was a way that the city could be freed from such a huge burden, the savings could be substantial.
My information mentioned that Hon. Osmeña was to sponsor a resolution to request the Japanese funders and the conduit bank to waive the said guarantee fee. The objective appeared to be most noble although behind the nobility of its façade, there were hidden political ramifications.
1. Her husband is still smarting from insult inflicted by the departure from Councilors Gerardo Carillo, Roberto Cabarrubias, Noel Wenceslao and Richard Osmeña, from the BOPK. He did not expect that they would find courage to get back at him for allowing a hound dog of his to file a complaint against them. He had to show to them that no one could junk him without serious repercussions. They should be punished politically quickly.
Councilor Osmeña employed a strategy familiar to those who read Sun Tzu. She had to dismiss the importance of the renegade four without appearing to be doing so. The remaining BOPK number in the council would not be enough to approve the measure. Should her resolution fail to pass, the impact of the departure of Carillo and company would be highlighted. Her recourse was to cultivate the support of Team Rama councilors and in the process disregard Carillo et al.
Her cover to this political maneuver was the announced importance of her resolution. Who could resist the idea of saving the city from hundreds of millions of pesos of guarantee fee? Under that coverture, she could show to the world that the councilors were only doing what is their collective best for the city without having to reckon their political enmity. It was a plea that no one could resist without losing "pogi points."
And what better diplomatic move there was than by humbling herself and asking her political foes to prop up her resolution. Imagine, the wife of the BOPK top honcho, she whose word is revered by robot-like BOPK councilors, is soliciting the support of Team Rama aldermen!
2.But, I think Hon. Osmeña, harbors a hidden agendum. Her goal is to blot out our memory of the participation of her husband, former Cebu City South District Congressman Tomas R. Osmeña, in the formulation of the loan agreement itself. For a time, he claimed to be the originator of the south reclamation project. In less than modest claims, he would deny the incumbent mayor the chance to sell portions of the SRP because, as the father of the project, he would know when to sell best. If indeed, the former mayor was responsible for conceiving the plan, he was the one who worked out its details, including the inclusion of a provision in the loan agreement for the payment of the very burdensome guarantee fee. Differently said, for us not to harp on the grave error of the former mayor, the lady councilor would want the combined force of BOPK and Team Rama to request for its waiver! I did not know that Sun Tzu was also Machiavelli.