Think about it
100 Islands still bristles
By Jun Velasco
LESS than a year back, we took a group of vacationists to the world-famous l00 Islands in Lucap.
You see, like many of you, whenever tourists or visitors are in town and look for a place to see and experience, we unthinkingly bring them to the fabled isles. More often than not, our visitors are impressed. Properly maintained, the virgin islands are a Godsend. We commend those who have religiously guarded the islands from being severely damaged.
In our last visit, we met the gorgeous Miss Teen Canada whose mother is a close friend of our friend Ben Diansay of Davao City. Our group had a grand reunion and later chanced upon the activist-mayor taking a nap on top of a hill in one of the islands. .
There were more than a hundred bathers or frolickers that lent gaiety to place.
There were many improvements initiated by Mayor Braganza. We thought Nani, who has had a wealth of experience in various government offices — congressman, cabinet member, and two-term mayor– was zealously doing his homework.
There was a time we deplored the improvements some LGU people were doing to the islands, because instead of developing, they were defacing them with their narrow concept of development. They usually interchange development with modernization.
Nani’s descent from national to local politics was a fresh wind in the development of the Hundred Islands. He is a well-meaning leader and an Alaminos native who loves his place.
His emotional outburst lately over reports and aerial photos showing he was remiss in his job as 100 Islands caretaker and developer is understandable. He was devoting his all for the best of the islands.
A master of logic, Nani saw a hole in City Administrator Raffy Baraan’s critique of his leadership and flaunted it to spite Governor Spines whom he suspects was behind the campaign to belittle his leadership. Nani tried to show that Raffy, the governor’s man, suddenly became his spokesman who blamed not the city but other government agencies for the fishponds that are desecrating a national treasure.
But Raffy make a new wallow by asking, why did Nani not do something about the fishponds?
The governor, who is still basking in the afterglow of his feats for dramatically upgrading basic services in the province, making the Capitol a world class and scoring the biggest voting margin in the province’s gubernatorial elections, must be thinking the islands by now should have taken the first step towards becoming better or at least matching the beauty of Boracay.
When he was still a PNP director, he was already writing his political thesis, “it’s tourism that will make the Philippines a top destination of the world.”
Of course, Nani won’t ever allow Spines to land on one of the islands and say, “I will make you world class.”
Nani would say, “not when I am still around.”
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