Making a liar out of Guv Spines

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

THE wild rumor from the grapevine last week is the impending return of jueteng in the province this week, barely a month after Guv Spines declared in the Senate that he will never allow jueteng to operate and flourish in the province.

The indications are clear that the jueteng operators and their political and police patrons are gathering enough momentum to change the course for a chance to resume their grand lifestyles again.

The cue for everyone (who stands to benefit from the resumption of payola) to begin simultaneous action appears to be that nasty text message foretelling Archbishop Oscar Cruz’s death by assassination, and prodding people to bet on the number (date) of his assassination.  (See our page 1 story on jueteng).

The desperation is apparent. Watch out for the politicos’ who will do their song-and-dance numbers for jueteng in the days ahead under the pretext of wanting to provide livelihood for the lowly kubradores who have been without means in the past weeks.

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Guv Spines, in a television interview, quickly tried to downplay the rumor by directing all mayors to resist attempts to coop them into joining a planned bandwagon to resume jueteng operations in their respective localities.

But I sense an even bigger problem for him.

The PNP leadership candidly acknowledges and decries the continued “guerilla” operations of known jueteng lords here yet it has done little or nothing to make the governor’s order to stop jueteng in all forms stick. We have yet to see the touted “one-strike policy” of the PNP applied here.  I would imagine that if the PNP here were dead serious about complying with the strict orders of Guv Spines, at least two police chiefs would have already been given the boot by this time. But no, the PNP just keeps warning the local chiefs about the policy but does nothing about it. It seems the “Comelec fever”, constantly threatening candidates who violate election laws but does nothing, has caught up with the cops.  Just all bark and no bite.

Going by the seemingly official lax attitude of the PNP here, P/Supt. Rosueto Ricaforte appears oblivious to the implications of his command’s continued reluctance to whip the local chiefs into line. He doesn’t seem to realize that a semblance of a losing battle vs. jueteng undermines Guv Spines’ standing and declaration before the Senate.

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It will be recalled it was Guv Spines who earnestly sought the opportunity to clear his name of allegations made at the Senate that he is the jueteng lord in the province.  He made his case and categorically pledged jueteng will be completely stopped while he’s the governor.  And true to his word, jueteng was immediately stopped in its tracks. The cabos and kubradorers vanished from the streets while the police demonstrated what its presence could do once ordered.

Without any sign of its resolve to crack the whip, the PNP’s warnings to the lower echelons come across as empty gestures and worse, appears as an exercise in conditioning the public’s mind to expect jueteng to gain foothold in the province soon like it’s a natural phenomenon.  Without firing an accountable city/town police chief in spite of incessant “guerilla” operations, Guv Spines can be suspected of double-talk, if not a big liar.

People today are beginning to wonder why the police are surprisingly soft on their jueteng targets. Could it be that Guv Spines has given the order to quietly pass on the “business as usual” alert to police chiefs in the province? I’d like to believe he has not. So what’s with the PNP?

The PNP leadership in the region and in the province would be well advised to stop acknowledging attempts to restore jueteng and instead start kicking police chiefs’ butts if they know what’s coming to them if they embarrass Guv Spines by affirming he lied about jueteng in Pangasinan.

Curiously, too, the provincial board has not called the provincial PNP for an update on the campaign vs. jueteng while talks of its triumphant return reverberate inside the capitol.

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THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATES. When Dagupan Mayor Benjie Lim refused to declare the city under a state of calamity, I thought he had well calculated that the disaster in the city did not deserve the full utilization of the city’s calamity fund. What a darn good executive this Mr. Lim really is…very exacting and prudent in the use of public funds, so I thought.

I thought wrong again being the hopeless cock-eyed optimist for a new BSL.

Relief packages meant for the typhoon victims bought with the city’s “limited” calamity funds were seen being distributed not to qualified beneficiaries but to the city hall’s favorite candidates in the barangay elections for their last minute campaign.  No wonder my “prudent” mayor refused to declare the city under a state of calamity. No wonder Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez was piqued when the city’s social welfare office could not account for the list of qualified typhoon victims who were qualified to receive relief goods. No wonder…

So I wonder no longer. The refusal of Mr. Lim to do as Guv Spines did declaring the province under a state of calamity was clearly a political ploy to prevent incumbent barangay chiefs, particularly those allied with former Mayor Al Fernandez, from accessing calamity funds, and to allow him and only him alone to decide who gets what for election purposes, not because they are typhoon victims in need.

But in fairness to Mr. Lim, he was not alone in this devious scheming. Many mayors reportedly connived with their favorite barangay kapitans in siphoning the calamity funds for the barangay elections. Wonder no more how and why vote-buying was rampant in the last barangay election, thanks to Typhoon “Juan”!

When politicians begin to think they are as omnipotent like God that they can exploit people’s miseries without being made to account for their acts, they literally become the devil’s advocates in the real sense. Fortunately, the oppressed can take comfort knowing that God’s and Nature’s law guarantee a payback time from their oppressors in many ways, in many forms.

No wonder, many believe it’s hell on earth living in a community led by unscrupulous, dodgy and ruthless trapos.

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