Applaud for Guv Spines?

  By Al S. Mendoza

GUV Spines has said: “No P500,000 for me. I will meet the media people from hereon.”

Will you and I applaud?

If you ask me, I will not.

In fact, I am sad that our Guv Spines was not able to receive his P500,000 from Malacanang. Unfair.

Practically all those who attended the breakfast meeting that day with Ate Glue received P500,000 or something.

How come Guv Spines didn’t receive such bounty himself?

Well, our Guv said he left early, missing the cash gifts that were given when the entourage of new provincial governors prepared to leave for home.

Like Ed Panlilio of Pampanga and Joselito Mendoza of Bulacan, Guv Spines is also a rookie governor.

With that half a million peso bonanza, Guv Spines could readily use it to augment his budget for social services or anything for the uplift of the province.

Why he didn’t have it in his hands up to now – if, indeed, he hasn’t yet – is a question begging for an answer.

I believe that amount is rightfully Guv Spines’. The person in charge of distributing it must, by all means, ensure that it got into the hands of our Guv. Now.

With that dole-out, did the Palace, in effect, bribe the governors?

I don’t think so.

What was reported was merely the cash gift.  There was never any mention of any reason behind the act.

Can Ate Glue bribe Governor Ed, a Roman Catholic priest whose integrity and principle seemed as impregnable as the Great Wall of China?

It was a gift, period.

As Governor Ed of Pampanga said: “I accepted it as the money is from the people, and I will use it for the good of the people.”

Reminiscent of the late Cardinal Sin’s famous line, “I don’t care where the money comes from (basically jueteng money donated to the Church), for as long as it will benefit our poor.”

Get the drift?

Now as to the declaration of Guv Spines to meet the media people of Pangasinan at least twice a month, what’s the big deal there?

Nothing.

It’s his sworn duty to meet news people regularly as the media is his conduit to the people he has sworn to serve before he ran for governor last May.

If he ignores the media, he ignores his constituents as well.  He would be like the father of a family who doesn’t communicate with his wife and children at all.

And   this thing about the 100 days of honeymoon between Guv Spines and the media finally ending on November 1 – again what’s the big deal there?

Nothing, too.

In fact, there shouldn’t be any so-called honeymoon at all between him and the media.

The media should be a natural-born Leftist and the Guv a natural-born Rightist.

Always, there should be a built-in adversarial stance between the two – the media being a natural watchdog of good governance.

Once the media loses that posture, we can only have a media that is subservient to the whims and caprices of the establishment.

Dig it?

 

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/general-admission/ Readers may reach columnist at also147@yahoo.com . For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)