“I DID not know her from the beginning, “Cebu City political leader Tomas Osmena was quoted in news media this week, when asked about the September 12, 2024 testimony of former city police chief Royina Marzan Garma before the House Quad Committee looking into the Pogo operations and killings and other crimes linked to offshore gambling.
Intended to clarify, that statement raised doubt instead, about what Osmena, former six-term mayor and one-term congressman, precisely meant. Were he and Garma not even acquaintances as co-workers in the local government? Maybe Osmena just wanted to tease or spite her by denying that he knew his former police chief or the things about her. After all, she had served Cebu City for one year or so and in fact clashed many times with her.
They must have known about each other, if not each other, as Tomas Osmena was unlikely to have blocked her coming to the city as police chief and later requested for her removal and charged her before the Ombudsman. Just as Garma wouldn’t have filed with the Ombudsman administrative and criminal complaints against the mayor without that mutual knowledge.
RUNNING FEUD. What seemed clear to Cebuanos when both served the city — and now mounted on national stage because of the House hearing — was that there was no love lost between city mayor Tomas and police director Garma.
Local news and editorials had mentioned a “running quarrel” and “continuing spat” between them when both occupied high public offices in the city. The anti-Garma barbs Osmena unleashed, inside and outside Congress, on the day of the hearing tell the public the feud was anything but over for the former mayor-congressman.
Garma was Cebu City’s police chief from July 1, 2018 up to July 11, 2019. Tomas Osmena was city mayor, then completing his 2016 to 2019 term (won by beating Michael Rama.)
When his stars and Garma’s stars collided, creating the sparks of battle, it was political season,
in the run-up to May 2019 election. Tomas perceived Royina as actively, if illicitly, conniving with his rival, an accusation based on 12 incidents that he cited in his charges against Garma before the Ombudsman. As to Garma’s charges against Tomas — arising from the alleged obstruction to justice in the release of three vendors on the purported order of the then mayor — those were dismissed by the Sandiganbayan in a reversal of its earlier finding that Osmena was guilty.
Apparently, to explain in part Tomas’s fresh attack against Garma, he must have blamed her for his and BOPK’s defeat in 2019 to Edgardo Labella and Barug. Osmena must have been convinced that police activities were orchestrated by Garma to derail his political machinery.
It must have stung that the “systematic harassment” of his leaders disrupted BOPK operations by sowing fear among supporters. The failed ambush of a Tejero barangay councilor was repeatedly used as example of the alleged police meddling in local politics at the time.
WHAT OSMENA TOLD THE HOUSE Quad Committee was not directly about Cebu politics though. Tomas alleged Thursday, September 18, 2024 that it was the report of corruption against Garma and police election activities that prompted him five and six years ago to block her assignment to Cebu City, then request for her removal or transfer, and charge her before the Ombudsman.
With that of another former mayor, Iloilo City’s Jed Mabilog, Tomas’s testimony was sought in the inquiry into how Duterte’s drug war was also allegedly used to “exact political vendetta” and “reward favored police officials.” Four House committees have been holding the hearings to examine the Duterte administration’s initiatives that allegedly “produced abuses, official misconduct and organized crime” and rise of the Pogos or offshore gambling.
Garma’s role in his 2019 defeat, true or not, must have stung as it set off a slide for BOPK, which the subsequent election (in 2022) didn’t reverse. Tomas’s wife and most of her team-mates lost in their bid, enabling Barug — led, first by Edgardo Labella, then by Mike Rama — to retain control of City Hall in two successive terms.
TOMAS RAISED ‘PAYOLA’ RAP VS GARMA IN 2018-2019. Tomas gave to the Quad Committee a four-page report from one Manuel Fraginal Sr., head of PCSO inter-branch security monitoring, which alleged that Garma, then CIDG regional head, was among “suspected protectors” of an illegal numbers game. Using that report, Osmena said, he opposed Garma’s transfer to Cebu City, complaining “personally” to Duterte and his chief lawyer, Salvador Panelo.
The same document that Osmena said was brought to the attention of Duterte and Panelo, among others, said that when Garma headed CIDG, she was “collecting P1 million per week as “payola” for illegal gambling activities with her alleged lover and bagman.” The report named only “a certain SPO4 Art” but Osmena named one “Arthur Narsolis.”
A WOMAN, NOT POLITICS? Osmena told the House Quad Committee he had asked from his sources — who had told him Garma would head PCSO after her retirement from PNP — why Duterte was against the then city mayor. “They said it was because of a woman,” Tomas said, “not politics.”
Not directly anyway: The woman, allegedly, directed the police anti-Osmena moves in the campaign, which wrought havoc on his strategy. She was not stopped or sanctioned by high authorities because, as the Quad Committee noted, Garma was “close and special” to Duterte. Garma herself told Cebu before she left in 2019, Osmena hated her but Duterte trusted her and she had the support of “the man in Malacanang.”
There was a woman. And there was politics: the woman used politics to shatter Osmena’s plans and career.
WARNINGS FROM TOMAS, ROYINA. Osmena warned the nation last Thursday: “Don’t be fooled by the woman’s tears.”
Garma gave her own farewell warning before she left Cebu on July 11, 2019: “I feel sad for the Cebuanos who fall for (Tomas Osmena’s) agenda.”
