Punchline
Wrong again
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
THERE goes the young promising Hon. Brian Lim again, this time with his left foot in his mouth.
After joining his father-mayor Benjie in a chorus labeling his colleagues in the council as a bunch of do-nothing lazy bums for refusing to be their rubber stamp, he stood up last week ostensibly to stop the city council from pursuing other mandated tasks and to act on the budget instead. He invoked the Local Government Code which he professed to know by heart. Naively believing that he knew whence he spoke, he insisted the city council cannot proceed to do other tasks until the budget is passed! Duh?
It’s becoming more evident that he thinks that just being a mayor’s son will make him look and sound intelligent. As a minority floor leader, he must know that his position is bigger than himself. People look up to a minority leader for his wisdom as a fiscalizer and as a catalyst but his recent position smacked of an obstructive orientation that exposed gross ignorance on his part. If he had been more diligent and spent more time studying laws, he would not be a source of embarrassment to his mother Celia who came to his defense on her terms last week.
He attempted to sound authoritative and knowledgeable by citing Section No. 323 of the Local Government Code and ended up choking on it. In speaking out, it became obvious that he, unlike high school English grammar students, could not tell the difference between “may”, “ shall” and “will” . He actually thinks the three words mean the same thing as modal verbs expressing a definitive, strong assertion in the future.
Wrong again.
Did he honestly think that he can be glib about his arguments and get away with it?
I am beginning to believe he became fixated on that one sentence and stopped reading beyond that sentence that used “may” because if he had read the whole section he would not be exposed to be sorely lacking in logic. Lest he keeps on invoking the section for the wrong reason, I’m posting it here for his benefit. Here’s the rest of that section:
“…If the sanggunian still fails to enact such ordinance after ninety (90) days from the beginning of the fiscal year, the ordinance authorizing the appropriations of the preceding year shall be deemed reenacted and shall remain in force and effect until the ordinance authorizing the proposed appropriations is passed by the sanggunian concerned. However, only the annual appropriations for salaries and wages of existing positions, statutory and contractual obligations, and essential operating expenses authorized in the annual and supplemental budgets for the preceding year shall be deemed reenacted and disbursement of funds shall be in accordance therewith. In the implementation of such reenacted ordinance, the local treasurer concerned shall exclude from the estimates of income for the preceding fiscal year those realized from nonrecurring sources, like national aids, proceeds from loans, sale of assets, prior year adjustments, and other analogous sources of income. No ordinance authorizing supplemental appropriations shall be passed in place of the annual appropriations. In case the revised income estimates be less than the aggregate reenacted appropriations, the local treasurer concerned shall accordingly advise the sanggunian concerned which shall, within ten (10) days from the receipt of such advice, make the necessary adjustments or reductions. The revised appropriations authorized by the sanggunian concerned shall then be the basis for disbursements.”
In sum, the section that Councilor Lim invoked was actually about the possibility of a “reenacted” budget if the council fails to pass a budget, not whether a city council can do other things. How the young Lim construed that passing the budget is the be-all and end-all in the life of the city council…that the city council shall cease to exist if the budget is not passed …that the city council cannot continue doing its other mandated tasks until the budget is passed…that the council should drop everything else until the budget is passed, is beyond simple logic and reason.
Who and what gave Mr. Brian that idea? I hope that was not his father’s idea, or was it? Poor Brian, he’s just another pawn in his father’s trapo politics and he can’t even see that.
Here’s an unsolicited advice for the young Lim. Stop being your father’s son in politics and start shaping your own vision, your aspiration to be a respected politician. Study and listen and know when to shut up and you will one day make your mother exceedingly proud and she would no longer have to come to your defense at anytime.
* * * * *
FUNNY HEADLINES. Speaking of Councilor Brian’s mom, the city hall spinmasters called on their allies in media last week to go to town with her letter admonishing me for my critical comments about her councilor-son and her husband Mayor Benjie. Actually, I thought it was flattering that they would actually spend on precious newsprint and airtime on a non-entity like me.
So to town they went…and as you might have expected, the literary geniuses at the city hall went overboard unwittingly making Mrs. Lim look like a terrorist. And the paid hacks mindlessly published them, funny as they were.
Consider the uniform headlines: “Mayor’s wife bombs newspaper publisher”, “Mayor’s wife blasts newspaper publisher” at a time when Metro Manila was in near panic after the bus bombing in Makati. Worse, the headlines painted the mayor’s wife as brutal and violent, which she is not. In Headline 101, “Mayor’s wife hits back” or “Councilor’s mom cries foul” would have merited a B+ plus grade.
I’m afraid the city hall operators outdid themselves again. Siguro naman Mrs. Lim now realizes the problems I report are created by city hall, not me.
* * * * *
BSL DOES IT AGAIN. The mayor’s office reported that Mayor Benjie Lim will deliver his State of the City Address on February 7 at the Museo ng Dagupan. At first blush and to the uninitiated, everything appeared nice and dandy but in fact there was something basically wrong about the announcement. It would not be held during the Sangguniang Panlungsod’s session and not inside the SP’s hall, a situation that’s contrary to law.
Chapter 3, Article 1, Section 455, item iii of the Local Government Code states that the city mayor must “Present the program of government and propose policies and projects for the consideration of the sangguniang panlungsod at the opening of the regular session of the sangguniang panlungsod every calendar year and as often as may be deemed necessary as the general welfare of the inhabitants and the needs of the city government may require;”
So what is Mr. Lim, the mayor, trying to prove again by delivering his SOCA outside of the SP hall? First he prevented department heads from appearing council sessions and hearings which led to delays in the budget hearings. Now this.
Mayor Benjie can never be justified in arbitrarily dictating terms contrary to law just to show who is boss. If the vice mayor and the councilors don’t’ show up in Mayor Benjie’s SOCA affair outside of the regular session and the SP hall, they would be perfectly justified to have done so. (In fact, Councilor Brian’s appearance there can only be construed as head cheerleader of the city hall, and that’s his privilege as his father’s son).
Without observing the process defined by law, Mr. Lim’s speech cannot be considered SOCA in compliance with the law but merely another “feel-good” speech in a public gathering. The law prescribes the delivery of SOCA to underscore the accountability of the mayor to the sanggunian, the councilors being the people’s representatives. Can you imagine PNoy delivering his SONA the Araneta Coliseum? We’d have another coup in no time.
It is not a mayor’s party where the latter invites guests at his discretion. It’s his duty to report to the sanggunian, just as PNoy has to report to Congress!
When will all the mayor’s follies end?
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