CRITICS AND allies alike, with the possible exception of Garcia arch-nemesis Sonny Osmeña, his brother Lito, and militant groups, concede that the governor works hard and manages the province well. Apart from infrastructure projects, she has embarked on a major policy shift in the delivery of health services by upgrading Cebu's hospitals into viable economic enterprises, and giving out health insurance. The province claims to be number one among local government units in the country in the number of poor families covered by PhilHealth. The governor has committed to an automatic renewal of the PhilHealth cards every year for as long as she is in office.

	THE Cebu International Convention Center, said to be the fitting crown to Gov. Garcia's achievements in her first term in office. [Photo by Alecks P. Pabico]

Garcia's focus on Cebu's economy has made the province number one in gross assets, equity and total income in the whole country. One year after she assumed office, Cebu posted a 15.74-percent growth in net income, and an unprecedented surplus of P2.1 billion. From 2005 to 2007, Cebu has also continued to register low annual per capita poverty threshholds, ranking 71 among 79 provinces. For 2007, this means that Cebuano families consisting of five members should earn a combined monthly income of P13,015 to meet their most basic food and non-food needs, as compared to provinces in Luzon like Cavite, Batangas, Bulacan, Pampanga, and Rizal which require P16,887 to P18,058 to sustain an "economically decent" lifestyle.

The Gwen Garcia administration is also known for the P515-million Cebu International Convention Center (CICC), site of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit held last January. But while many see it as a fitting crown to the governor's achievements, Lito Osmeña thinks otherwise. Criticizing the governor for doing what the private sector can do, he says the national government should have spent for the CICC. "What business do Cebuanos have in helping the national government, when we are already a colony of the national government?" he asks. "Cebu contributes twice as much to the national government as the national government spends back on Cebu."

In any case, many say the governor partly inherited her governance and political skills from her old man, and she has been honing these since her days as consultant on economic development for the Ormoc City government. Garcia was also previously married to Eufrocino Codilla Jr., former Ormoc councilor and son of incumbent Ormoc congressman Eufrocino Codilla Sr. But it was more as her father's consultant that Garcia gained experience in local politics. Pabling even allowed her to sit in various Capitol committees and at times presided over meetings — for which she was later criticized for performing more as an executive assistant than an adviser.

"She knows her politics," says Poca, who welcomes the governor's dynamic governance and display of political decisiveness. By that, he means Garcia's tough demeanor, especially compared to previous governors like Eduardo Gullas, now congressman, and her own father Pabling, who were rather conservative, cautious, less aggressive and less confrontational.

"She gives the impression that nobody can monkey around with her programs, unlike her father, who is an old-school politician whose weakness was that he could not say no as firmly as Gwen does," adds Malilong. "That is her strength."

Her flaws, however, include a bad temper. The governor has been known to berate local officials in public and, often, using gutter language. One academic who asked her to make an accounting of the province's funds during a planning session received a vicious tongue-lashing instead. Department heads who do not attend meetings also get a very public scolding. And where her father would be more respectful and careful about statements against the Osmeñas, Gov. Garcia has been the exact opposite. Only recently, she issued scathing comments against Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, with whom she had butted heads over lots owned by the province that are currently occupied by city residents.

Not that her flare-ups will hurt her — and her family's — political future. Mojares, for one, says that voters seem less worried about concentrating power in a few and more interested in the promise of a unified leadership. And when Gwen Garcia became governor despite the odds in 2004, it somehow validated her father's claim that as far as Cebu politics is concerned, they are the family that matters. Should three Garcias win in May, there may no longer be any doubt about that.

The Other Garcia FOR CEBU political commentator Frank Malilong Jr., the best proof of the Garcia family's Malacañang connection is the fact that Winston Garcia has kept his position as president and general manager of the Government Service Insurance System, despite persistent calls for his ouster. Many of the complaints against Garcia are actually series charges, with GSIS employees accusing him of "mismanagement, corruption, and oppressiveness." Garcia was handpicked by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo herself in January 2001, shortly after she assumed the presidency, to head the scandal-tainted GSIS. But his stint at the state pension fund was soon marked by "highly questionable" management decisions, among them the transfer of GSIS funds worth P19 billion from the government-owned Land Bank to Union Bank, a private commercial bank owned by the Aboitiz family; the P46-million purchase of Parisian Life, a Juan Luna painting; and a P1-billion loan to the Philippine Estates Authority for the President Diosdado Macapagal Avenue alleged to be overpriced by almost P600 million. (The Senate blue ribbon committee, however, cleared the GSIS of any wrongdoing, finding the loan aboveboard.) At the height of the government's fiscal crisis, Garcia and other favored GSIS officials likewise received flak from the public for the perks they were enjoying — including a combined P12-million housing and car loans for Garcia alone — not to mention six-digit salaries. Defending the privileges accorded by his position, Garcia argued that the problem in the country is that people do not correlate responsibility to salary. "You expect to pay me P30,000 a month and go home to Cebu every weekend because it is cheaper maintaining a family there than in Manila," he said at one point. "What do you want me to do, steal?" In 2001, the PCIJ also reported how Winston Garcia appeared to be bent on going on with "business as usual" as far as GSIS insurance transactions are concerned — which was to continue conspiring with favored brokers in skimming off fat commissions from the government's billion-peso reinsurance business. The series showed how Garcia was partial to a well-known insurance agent, Jardines, which earned a hefty $3.3 million in commissions and fees from the National Power Corporation's (Napocor) account in 2000. Napocor complained of irregularities in the negotiations for its old insurance policy, saying that the policy was not publicly bidded out and that Jardines charged the firm more than double — an overprice of $8.3 million — the offer made by a rival foreign firm. Moreover, despite a law banning unprofitable government corporations from signing contracts longer than 12 months, the policy was extended to 18 months. Garcia filed a P12.5-million libel case against the writer of the series, Shiela Samonte-Pesayco, in Cebu in November 2001. In his complaint, Garcia claimed that the article was "replete with false and malicious imputations and actuations, calculated to dishonor, discredit and contempt upon his person, and to impeach his honesty, virtue and reputation." Specifically, he cited as "absolute and deliberate falsehood" the PCIJ report's portrayal of him as having a reputation as a "dealmaker," and that he was charged with graft when he was still a Cebu official. But a petition for review of the prosecutor's finding of probable cause against Pesayco filed by her counsels eventually upheld the PCIJ's story as a legitimate exercise of freedom of speech and of the press. The case was subsequently withdrawn and dismissed by the RTC Branch 19, Cebu City on April 18, 2005. In the meantime, Garcia has been kept busy dismissing accusations against him as resistance brought about by the reforms he instituted to make GSIS more responsive to its mandate to take care of government workers upon their retirement. For instance, he says his policy of less reinsurance and more retention of premium has limited corruption in the state pension fund. He adds that such a move reduced Napocor's debt from $25 million to $14 million. Garcia has said that with all the negativity his work at GSIS seems to have attracted, he consoles himself with the knowledge that "the good things you do today will only be appreciated a few years from now when you are no longer the incumbent." For her part, President Arroyo, responding to the criticisms against Garcia, has attributed the issues raised by GSIS employees, as well as other government workers, to "leftist troublemakers who have absolutely no persuasive powers over the Office of the President." — PCIJ Staff