|
CEBU CITY: Voters in Bogo on Saturday overwhelmingly
approved its conversion from a municipality into a city.
Commission on Elections (Comelec)
Regional attorney and acting Provincial Election Supervisor Lionel
Marco Castillano said 24,488, or 60.79 percent of Bogo’s
registered voters cast their votes in the plebiscite.
Of those who voted, 23,955, or
97.82 percent voted yes while 482, or 1.98 percent voted No.
The voted capped eight years of
struggle for the first class municipality to become a city which was
mired in both the local and national politics.
The fierce rivalry then between
the family of Celestino “Junie” Martinez Jr., the Fourth
District’s political kingpin, and then-Senator John “Sonny”
Osmeña proved to be a catastrophe to the bill that Rep. Clavel
Martinez filed in June 1999.
Now, however, Osmeña and the
Martinezes are friends, banding together against Gov. Gwendolyn
Garcia.
In December 2000, or a month
after the Nov. 4 public hearing by the House committee on local
governments, Osmeña blocked the bill for Bogo while at the same
time pushing for the conversion bill for Talisay City filed by his
ally, Rep. Eduardo Gullas of Cebu’s First District.
Besides Osmeña, the Bogo
Business Association in 2001 also raised objections to the move.
Local businessmen feared they would be swamped with competition from
out of town if Bogo, the trading center of northern Cebu, becomes a
city.
Despite the odds, members of the
Martinez family were then optimistic a plebiscite would be held
before the May 2001 local and national elections, but Clavel
Martinez and the rest of the House of the Representatives were
buried with work in the impeachment of then-President Joseph
Estrada.
Even if the Martinez family had
managed to have the bill approved in both houses of Congress, Osmeña,
an ally of Estrada, had then warned that Estrada could not be
expected to sign it into law because Clavel was a member of the
House panel of prosecutors working against the president.
Martinez’s reelection in 2004
gave her the opportunity to file the bill again on September 23,
2004.
This time, the approval of the
bill was hampered by the new income requirement for conversion of
towns into cities: from P20 million to P100 million, excluding
shares in the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA).
Martinez, along with sponsors of
new city bills for at least 20 other towns, sought exemption from
the new income requirement.
The House of Representatives
granted them exemptions, citing the fact that the bills were filed
before the new requirement was approved.
On February 1, 2007, the Senate
local government committee finally approved the conversion of 12
municipalities into cities, including Cebu’s Bogo and Carcar.
The League of Cities lobbied
against the approval of the bills because with the new cities, their
share in the IRA will be reduced.
Given that advocacy by the
league, President Arroyo did not affix her signature of approval on
the bill but allowed it to lapse into law on March 15.
--PNA
|
