Home 
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña Tuesday reiterated his warning to provincial officials of their plan to recover 33,737 square meters of province-owned properties that are now occupied by the city's urban poor families.
Osmeña told Provincial Board (PB) Member Juan Bolo in a January 11 letter that the province's dream of earning millions from the recovery of these properties will remain an “illusion” because the city government will never cooperate with the province's plan of evicting the lots’ occupants.
“One point is clear – the provincial government's bragging about its enormous real estate assets is becoming an illusion without the cooperation of the city,” he said in his letter.
He said that while he was also thinking of reconciliation, this cannot be done at the expense of the affected families.
“I agree that contrary to public perception, our conflict with the governor is not personal. I also dream of restoring the close partnership between the Province and the City (including my friendship with the governor), but not at the expense of the more than 10,000 affected families,” Osmeña said.
The mayor wrote Bolo in reaction to the Board Member's invitation, asking members of the Cebu City Council on January 9 to help him bring Osmeña and Governor Gwendolyn Garcia back into the negotiating table to resume discussions on the proposed lot swap deal.
But Osmeña wanted no more discussions and asked the provincial board to authorize Garcia to sign a Memorandum of Exchange of real properties which they agreed to enter into in 2004.
In his January 14 letter reply to Osmeña, Bolo said that the provincial board and he as chairperson of the committee on real properties never received a copy of the Memorandum of Exchange (MOE).
Bolo said that in the absence of the memorandum, the provincial board do not have basis to issue the authority that Garcia needs.
City Administrator Francisco Fernandez told Cebu Daily News on Tuesday that it was Provincial Legal Officer Marino Martinquila who authored the draft MOE.
“I'm sure that if the governor has a copy, the PB will also have a copy of the proposed memorandum,” he said.
Fernandez said he is certain that Bolo was aware of the existence of the draft MOE since he had been attending meetings that Fernandez and other city officials attended discussing the proposed lot swap.
Osmeña said in his press conference on Tuesday that he finds it impossible for the provincial board not to have read the draft MOE when they have already made a stand to demand a value for value exchange of properties.
Osmeña said that he did not intend to fight with Bolo when he wrote his January 11 letter. He did not also want to threaten them.
The mayor said that he just wanted to make provincial officials realize that they will never get the cooperation of the city in evicting urban poor families to consolidate the provincial properties identified under ordinance 93-1.
He said the provincial government's demand to have a value for value swap is also impossible.
“Sooner or later they will wake up that value is not what you think it’s worth, but what other people are willing to pay for it. I just don't see if they'll ever get anything close to what we are offering them,” Osmeña said. /Reporter Doris C. Bongcac
