[] Tomas’s suspension is punitive, Mike’s is preventive. Rama’s created a tremor, still being felt at City Hall and the city. Osmeña’s has not.
[] Tomas found guilty of grave misconduct, and “probably guilty” of obstruction of justice, for which the Ombudsman may indict him before Sandiganbayan. Complaint against Mike, seven others, to undergo the process and respondents are still presumed innocent.
Last Wednesday, May 29, 2024, the Ombudsman released its decision against former Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña ordering his one-year suspension over the 2018 release by the mayor of three persons from the Parian police station. Administratively, the Ombudsman found Tomas guilty of grave misconduct. On the criminal charge of obstruction of justice, the Ombudsman found “probable cause to indict him.”
Earlier, on May 8, 2024, the Ombudsman ordered the six-month suspension of Michael Rama and seven others over the non-payment of salaries of four city assessor’s office regular employees and their alleged maltreatment. The case has still to undergo the same process that Osmeña’s case went through.
A news outlet headlined the Osmeña story as “another suspension.” Right, as it came barely 20 days after the Rama suspension. Yet there are big differences between the two cases, including these:
[1] MAYORS SUSPENDED, NATURE OF PENALTY. Osmeña had long left the city mayor’s office when the order was promulgated, on February 29, 2024, but announced only this week. Tomas’s term ended June 30, 2019, having lost the May 2019 election to then Barug standard-bearer, the late Edgardo Labella, and later in the 2022 election, in which Rama beat the Osmeña surrogate, Tomas’s wife Margot.
In contrast, Rama was the sitting mayor when he was suspended, yielding to his vice mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia on May 13, three days after the Ombudsman order. Tomas’s suspension was punitive: for grave misconduct, on a complaint filed August 30, 2018 by then city police director Senior Superintendent Royna Marzan Garma. Mike’s was preventive, for the complaint filed by the four City Hall employees. Tomas was not preventively suspended but Mike was.
Tomas’s penalty, of course, couldn’t be enforced anymore. The Ombudsman ruling converted the suspension into a fine equivalent to his basic salary for one year, payable to the Ombudsman, from his receivables from City Hall–unless Osmeña had long been paid what the City owed him.
(Tomas’s monthly pay in his 2016-2019 term has not been reported but mayor’s salaries range from P185,695 to P204,054, based on the Salary Standardization Law V. Salaries “vary by city’s income class and region… and legislative adjustments.” In a June 13, 2004 news, a third-term mayor would be paid P34,323 a month.)
[2] MIKE’S EVICTION SHAKES UP CITY HALL; TOMAS’S DOESN’T. Obviously because Osmeña has long gone from office, his suspension didn’t set off the tremor that Rama’s suspension did, nor the damage that is seen to inflict on Mike’s political career.
Mike Rama has been cut off from city government power and resources, which he must need to prepare for his reelection next May 2025. The stripping of power is thrice longer–six months compared to the previous 60 days–than in any of the two suspensions in his second full term (2013-2016). He’s forming his slate for the October COC-filing deadline outside City Hall minus the setting and perks of power.
Another personal damage is on Mike’s public image: people, especially city voters, are enabled to compare Mike’s governance, in policy and style, to that of another mayor, and may have found the comparison jarring.
[3] RUNNING FEUD BETWEEN TOMAS, POLICE CHIEF COMPLAINANT. On several occasions, police chief Col. Royina Garma–whose complaint led to the Ombudsman penalty against Tomas Osmeña–clashed publicly with the then mayor.
In comparison, there was no open conflict between Rama and the unpaid employees, who sued the mayor et al before the Ombudsman. Some speculate the bad blood was between the workers and their supervisors, not Mike Rama himself.
Tomas and his complainant, city police chief Royina Garma, frequently traded barbs, as these news headlines would tell: “Garma says Mayor Osmeña hated, Duterte trusted” (October 11, 2018); “Osmeña dares Garma: Name the cops harassing barangay captains” (April 14, 2019), “Mayor Osmeña wants Garma out” (May 7, 2019).
Garma through the Parian chief inspector filed the August 30, 2018 criminal and administrative charges against Osmeña after the mayor “facilitated” the release of three persons detained on August 14 for selling butane canisters refilled with LPG or liquefied petroleum gas at the T. Padilla public market. The charges were obstruction of justice, grave abuse of authority, misconduct, a violation of the Conduct for Government Officials and Employees.
[4] NO BAD BLOOD BETWEEN RAMA, 4 EMPLOYEES. At least, the enmity between the four employees and Rama was not the primary cause. One news report said the employees were not targeting the mayor, only the supervisors, but Rama was a necessary respondent as he allegedly signed the papers. Rama reportedly said the employees were only instigated by lawyers and other persons who hate him.
In the Osmeña case, the hate between Tomas and Garma seethed like road asphalt on a hot day. After she filed the complaint, Garma intoned: “This is not to teach others a lesson. It’s a very basic rule not to intervene in any arrest or custody of suspects… No one, not even elected officials, has the authority to take custody of arrested persons… The bottom line here is respect.”
On July 11, 2019, Garma’s last day of her Cebu City 2018 posting, reporters asked her about “the last thing she’d do…” She replied, “Well, I’m leaving everything there,” apparently referring to Osmeña’s stripping the mayor’s office bare, including removal of tiles, before his term ended that June.
[5] AN EMBARRASSMENT TO CEBU CITY? On May 9, 2024, BOPK chief Osmeña–who said he’d run for vice mayor in the 2025 election–described Rama’s suspension as “another embarrassment to Cebu City” and called for Mike to step down as president of the City Mayors League “as an embarrassment to every mayor in the country.” A number of city mayors instead expressed support for Rama. This is Mike’s third suspension, so “we’ve gotten used to be embarrassed,” Tomas said. No Cebu City mayor has ever been suspended, Osmeña said, “so Rama beats all the previous city mayors, three versus zero.”
With Tomas’s own suspension converted into a fine of one-year mayor’s salary, would Osmeña’s penalty be an embarrassment too? Not anymore because he’s no longer a sitting mayor who leads a national organization of city mayors?
[6] TOMAS ‘GUILTY’ OF MISCONDUCT; MIKE STILL PRESUMED INNOCENT. Tomas Osmeña was accused of obstruction of justice by interfering with police function and “usurping” the power to detain criminal suspects. Not only did he secure from the police custody of the said suspects, he set them free. Tomas’s suspension/fine was penalty for the administrative offense of grave misconduct.
On the crime of obstruction of justice, the Ombudsman found “probable cause” to indict him, which the ex-mayor may be required to face in the Sandiganbayan–an aspect that the news stories virtually obscured.
For the purpose of imposing preventive suspension, the Ombudsman found probable cause (“probably guilty”) that Mike Rama, with seven others, unlawfully withheld the salary of, and “mistreated,” four employees. But Mike, with his co-respondents, is not yet found guilty on all aspects of the charges; they’re still presumed innocent. The suspension is to prevent him and the others from tampering with testimonies and other evidence under the control of their offices.
[7] FODDER FOR CRITICS. The suspension has provided ammunition to critics of suspended mayor Rama by hailing moves of the acting mayor that rivals or enemies of Mike made to look like he was wrong or acted wrongly.
Osmeña has still to give his spin on his own suspension: how it is not embarrassing or hurting, or is much less so, than the suspension enforced against Rama, a former protégé and now long-time political rival.
