Punchline
Another round of bad news (for Dagupeños)
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
First the bad news (for Dagupeños):
The Dagupan City government finally terminated the services of its 142 emergency workers or casuals and some of its technical consultants. The city can no longer afford to pay their salaries.
A number of its development projects have also been cancelled owing to a huge shortfall in revenue collection. Payments for payables due this year will be suspended till first quarter of 2007.
Now the good news (only for the city officials).
The pork barrel of the city officials next year will be increased.
Jueteng has been resurrected in the city in preparation for the 2007 congressional and city elections.
By yearend, the Lim administration will herald its success in fiscal management! No budget deficit! But of course!
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JCI MEMBERS IN THE CITY GOVERNMENT. Welcome visiting JCI members to Dagupan City! We sincerely hope you will enjoy the city more than we can. You are fortunate to be lionized by our city officials who have selflessly dedicated themselves to raiding the city coffer over the years.
We hope you will see and appreciate the beauty of the city in spite of the self-serving tarps featuring our city officials’ best photos strung on electric posts, now defacing the city. (It might interest you to know that these same officials want to impose tax on these same poles but would not think of paying anything for using the poles for their personal use. What hypocrisy, don’t you think?).
And, we sincerely apologize for our city officials, they who loudly proclaim themselves as proud JCI members, for failing to live up to the tenets and values preached by your prestigious organization. Most won’t think twice of stealing the people’s money.
So, please do enjoy the hospitality in spite of them.
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“DREAM CITY”. If you think Dagupan City ought to feel bad for losing miserably not only to Urdaneta City but to all other cities in the region in terms of financial performance, then you have not heard everything yet.
Dagupan City was not even mentioned as a close probable for competitiveness among the countries cities based on a survey under the Philippine Cities Competitiveness Ranking Project spearheaded by the Asian Institute of Management and the United States Agency for International Development.
In the “big cities” category, Davao City ranks with Makati City, the country’s premier financial and business center, as first.
In the mid-sized cities category, Bacolod was on the top slot trailed by Batangas, Iloilo, San Fernando in Pampanga, Cagayan de Oro, Angeles, Iligan, Zamboanga, Calamba, Lipa, General Santos, Baguio, Cabanatuan, Butuan and Tarlac.
In the “small cities” category, or cities whose population is less than 200,000, San Fernando in La Union ranks first, followed by Legazpi in Bicol and Tagbilaran in Bohol.
Where is Dagupan City? You ask. Ah, still a “dream city” and I fear it’s going to be a dream forever.
The competitiveness ranking is based on several criteria including infrastructure development, business environment, corporate practices, quality of life, and responsiveness of local governments to citizens’ and business’ concerns.
Kawawang Dagupan City.
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AN OSTRICH IN THE CITY. If the city government is now in the doldrums, it’s because we have city officials who are constantly in a state of denial or should I say have perfected the art of denial, like the ostrich that would rather bury its head than keep it up for a better perspective.
The latest antic of City Administrator Raffy Baraan says it all. He insists the COA report about Dagupan being kulelat in financial performance is inaccurate and without basis. At the rate he is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has peddled his version that it was the PUNCH that concocted the financial report! Good grief!
His charge that COA fabricated the figures cuts a pathetic image for himself. If he can deny with a straight face that the financial figures that COA reported were sourced from his office, then the city is surely in a real big trouble. He either thinks Dagupeños are so stupid to believe him or he has a mindset that will not even qualify him to be the administrator of the National Mental Hospital.
But I don’t blame him. It’s his only way of being useful to Mr. Benjie Lim, he who is chiefly responsible for the Dagupan City’s near bankruptcy, and the creator of the illusion that Dagupan is a dream city by staying away in China half of the time.
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CHEATING: GMA and NURSES’ EXAM. The nurses who passed the tainted 2006 exams have reason to be jubilant at least for now, after Malacañang decided that the successful nurse examinees of the 2006 board exams will not be asked to retake the exam. What a relief, indeed!
But unfortunately still for the 2006 batch, the final verdict came a little wee too late. Like it or not, the batch is unfairly and forever tainted with the stigma, all because the GMA government failed to settle the issue purposefully from day 1.
When Malacanang deftly passed the buck to the Professional Regulation Commission and Nurses’ Board on the first days of the controversy, it was obvious that the primordial concern was not the plight of the nurses but whether the incident can be diffused so as not to compound the bigger issue of “cheating, stealing and lying” that has plagued the Arroyo presidency.
Malacañang’s indecision and ambivalence cost the nurses their professional careers. Worse, the new formula enabled a number of those who failed earlier to become passers by the stroke of some equation, further aggravating the situation for the nurses who passed the exams fair and square!
Now, hospitals here and abroad will likely ask applicants: Are you from the 2006 batch? Are you one of the original passers or one of the “pasang-awa”?
Believe you me when I say we are still our worst enemies.
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GMA’s DILEMMA. President Arroyo’s decision not to compel nurses to retake the whole or part of the exam was actually predictable. The only thing that surprised me is that it took her this long to speak out. Given the controversy about her alleged cheating in the 2004 elections that refuses to die, that’s understandable.
All these charges of cheating are reminiscent of her first days when confronted with the “Hello Garci” tapes. She hemmed and hewed only to offer an apology crafted in legal gobbledygook after a week. But the damage was done.
Her decision on the nurses’ dilemma is, in fact, reflective of what she hopes would happen in her own cheating case.
Like the nurses, she doesn’t want anyone to do a recount of her votes tainted by “dagdag-bawas” on a grand scale. She should not be made to participate in a snap election, and neither should she be impeached. Like the nurses, she should be entitled to be President till 2010 regardless of what church leaders, eyewitness, confessed cheating operators say about her election!
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