By Ermin Garcia Jr.

 

WITHOUT a doubt, the rules and jurisprudence cited by the DILG opinion against the illegal acts of the 7 EpaLiFes earned for themselves a despicable legacy they who brazenly violated all basic decent rules in local governance over an eight-month period to promote their hideous political agenda!

Even an apology from them at this time, assuming they even think of doing so, will not ever diminish the magnitude of the serious damage and harm they have done to the people of Dagupan. They deliberately sought to deprive their own constituents of services and programs they deserve from their government and believed they can conveniently blame Mayor Belen Fernandez for it. Call them naïve but in my book, they were evil.

The same arrogance of the 7 EpaLiFes still makes them believe the DILG legal opinion is misguided.  They still believe that no one is above them, not even the DILG. And just to prove that they think they are in the right, I would not be surprised if they decide to reject the 2023 annual budget in the end to force the city to continue operating with the program-less 2022 budget… and gloat!

I also won’t be surprised as well if they will consider sending an invitation to the provincial and city DILG officers to respond to questions about the negative evaluation of their work.

Now comes, another tact to continue delaying the approval of the annual budget for added leverage to get their additional monthly P70k for each. They set another condition, another committee hearing demanding the presence of Vice Mayor Bryan Kua and City Legal Officer Atty. Aurora Valle again after they appeared last week with Mayor Belen Fernandez et al.

Unfortunately for them, each delaying tactic makes them dig their political graves deeper.

But curiously, even given the 7 EpaLiFes self-conceit, they don’t appear concerned that they can be brought before the Ombudsman for refusing to pass the 2023 budget. Why? Is it because they think they know Mayor Belen she doesn’t have it in her to file a case against them?  Seeing her still refusing to file malversation charges against members of the 2019-2022 scholarship committee despite all her unceasing threats is telling enough.

Let’s see if they are right or wrong about her.

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DANGEROUS PRECEDENT. The Belen Fernandez administration blinked and created a dangerous precedent when it agreed to comply with the demand of the 7-majority to appear before them as a committee.

The decision to meet the 7 EpaLiFes on their terms opened the floodgates for more abuses not only today but in the months and years ahead, and they only have themselves to blame for their situation. By appearing in the committee hearing, a situation unheard of in the past, they legitimized an irregular and anomalous situation. Tsk-tsk. They provided the rationale to make all their past illegal acts suddenly legit and acceptable.

Why Mayor Belen and his team this didn’t see this coming is beyond me. 

The 7 EpaLiFes must be beating their chests in euphoria over this totally unexpected turnaround, making the executive meet their highly irregular terms even without any assurance that the annual budget will be passed.

Round 10 went to the 7 EpaLiFes! 

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NO PRIORITY FOR AGRI. The dialogue that Sen. Imee Marcos had with the province’s stakeholders and tete-a-tete with local media brought to the surface the continued absence or lack of initiatives of the provincial government to develop and promote agriculture as the province’s primary industry.

While the senator was candid enough to express her own disappointment with the development programs being pursued by the Department of Agriculture (headed by her president-brother PFMJR), and she began to wonder what the Guico administration was doing about it.

Well, if the plan of the Guico administration to secure a P6-B credit line (loan), there is nothing in it that says agriculture is a priority under Guv Mon-Mon Guico’s administration. The P6-B that he wants off-the-cuff for the province are for roads and, tourism, education and health kuno. Nada para agriculture!

To date, he has not defined any process or objective how to prevent another shortage in rice and onions that Pangasinan is known as primary producer. A shortage in the supply of salt also threatened the industry.

But neither Guv Mon-mon or Vice-Guv Mark Lambino was heard offering solutions, or inviting stakeholders to a meeting to preempt any negative impact of the shortages on the province.  Nothing! How’s that for giving agriculture the priority it deserves!

But lo and behold, they didn’t waste time to apply for a P6-B credit line ostensibly for priority projects and programs for the province, projects that were never studied and whose benefits were never even discussed in full by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan.

And they chose to have a P6-B credit line for loans (with interests, of course) with Land Bank instead of seeking national funding via congress, a process that Guv Mon-mon, a former legislator, knows too well.  But why with Land Bank, and not Congress for big ticket projects??

Unlike time-measured projects approved by Congress where the executive can be held accountable for the project’s delivery, Guv Guico knows too well that a mere credit line will not make him accountable for any of his proposed projects that will be approved for coverage by Land Bank.

In fact, he knows that it will be his successors in the next 3 to 5 terms who will be held accountable for the completion of projects, not he, whose only accountability is the early and release of the loans for bidding purposes.

(Ssshh…it’s during the bidding when negotiations for 20%-30% “S.O.P.s” with favored contractors are made…hehe). Enough said!

Now, you know why the today’s provincial government’s policy is “No talk-No mistake”!

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