The see-saw battle for majority control of the Sangguniang Panlungsod continues to sizzle with the tyranny of numbers yet again played a key role to ensure the passage of the 2014 annual city budget. Only last December, the city council made a dramatic turnaround when the opposition bloc passed a resolution authored by City Councilor Alexander Lim stripping City Mayor John Geesnell “Baba” Yap of his blanket authority to hire city hall personnel who are contractual in nature. Friday's session was the turn of the administration camp to deliver to its nemesis in the city council the defeat it deserves when the law-making body voted 7-4, to gain passage of the city budget. Administration Councilors Bebiano Inting and Adam Relson Jala led the “charge of the light brigade” to dismantle whatever is left of the opposition numbers.

The city budget which contains a touchy provision like the authority of the city mayor to hire contractuals, job order casuals and other professional personnel became the object of opposition nitpicking when the annual general appropriations proposal was tabled for deliberations in Friday's session. Opposition lawyers—the likes of City Councilors Oscar Glovasa, Lim and Nereo Zamora II, zeroed in on the budget provision restoring the city mayor's authority to renew the contracts of contractual hires but their legislative heroics all came to naught when the numbers game was made to settle the issue. It was a bittersweet defeat for the opposition as it entertained the same possibility that its December outing with the Lim resolution still works in their favor. With the composition of the city council visibly altered with the election of Edgar Bompat as president of the Liga ng mga Barangay, city chapter, no way will the opposition make a repeat performance when it withdrew the mayor's authority to hire contractual workers.

It used to be that the opposition enjoyed the support of two of its durable allies, Councilors Philip Besas and Alberta Torralba, only to discover last Friday's session that they were “pliant as a bamboo which swayed wherever the wind blows.” But for Besas and Torralba, it was a good decision to go with the legislative wind now under the protective wings of City Mayor Yap and backstopped by five other city councilors in its legislative stable. The seven city councilors sealed the approval of the city budget. The 2014 budget is an important piece of legislation as it will provide the road map of the incumbent city administration. This year's budget is P529,376,541.