Punchline
A lesson for the “Mighty 8”
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
THE die is cast for Lyceum Northwestern University. It will not be cowed into submission by city hall.
It’s top honcho, the irrepressible Gonz Duque, he who dares to play with fire regularly with gusto, has sent the message loud and clear that he would not hesitate to fight for what is right and just, even if he has to fight city hall, literally. And fight he did. He did the unthinkable – to ask for reimbursement of past payments of business taxes.
This was initially prompted by the public humiliation engineered by Dagupan Mayor Benjie Lim, calling LNU and the other universities and colleges in the city “tax cheats”.
Not content with the name-calling, Mr. Lim ordered LNU to pay P88,000 in what the latter claims as the university’s deficiency in business tax. But Gonz would have none of it and instead preferred to pay the court P134,000 as filing fee for the chance to prove that the city government is unjust and guilty of illegal exaction.
Indeed, what is a man to do if he is insulted publicly after voluntarily paying business taxes due through the years without question, then only to find out that the city government never had the legal basis to collect much less demand payment of business taxes from educational institutions?
Way to go Gonz! Show the Mighty 8 in the city council the difference between a “balls-filled” promise and an “all-bark, no-bite” threat to bring about good governance.
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OFFICIAL COVER-UP. Just as I feared, the cover-up for the multi-million beachfront sale racket in Dagupan City is already in the works. Note the sequence of events.
After claiming that the city hall waivers issued for electric connection (and exempting beachfront buyers from local fees) are “fake”, the signatures of Mayor Benjie Lim and City Administrator Vlad Mata as “forged,” Barangay Kapitan Gonzales of Bonuan Binloc came forward to casually deny any knowledge about the “fake” waivers. Just like that.
Then, after three resort establishments were finally determined to be illegally occupying public land, Mayor Benjie Lim adamantly refuses to issue a written order to the city engineering and the police to effect the demolition of the three. He left it to the city engineer to take all the legal risks in demolishing the illegal structures. Smart thing to do for someone who wants to do a Pontius Pilate at the right time.
Then came the city hall announcement that an “internal” investigation will be conducted but without specifying the objectives of such an investigation, i.e., who will be investigated and for what, who will conduct the investigation and when it hopes to finish and report the findings. Obviously, without the specifics, Mr. Lim and his cohorts do not have to account for the results of their “investigation”.
It, therefore, came as no surprise to many that Mayor Lim and his son Councilor Brian panicked when the city council decided to pursue its own investigation “in aid of legislation.” Just when most expected the Lims to show enthusiasm and gratitude for the city council’s intent to help clear their names in the scandal, as only truly innocent suspects would naturally do, the younger Brian desperately tried to dissuade his colleagues from pursuing its own investigation. But here’s the real eyebrow- raiser: The father-son tandem refuse to call in the NBI to investigate the widespread issuance of “fake” waivers that bore “forged” signatures of the mayor and his city administrator. They amuse me no end indeed.
Now comes an attempt by the city hall in what I suspect is a plot to deliberately stymie its own “investigation”. City Treasurer Romelita Alcantara, instead of making some of her personnel account for failing to report the non-registration of the three illegally situated beach resorts, sent notices to the owners to register their establishments, unmindful of the three resorts’ illegal occupation of public land and the supposed “verbal” order for their demolition by Mr. Lim. It’s not even a notice to collect penalty or fines for operating illegally (without business permits) in 2011. (In sharp contrast, the LNU was promptly threatened with a 2nd official notice for failing to pay the “right” business tax due from it, in spite of regular payment of its taxes annually. And Mr. Lim had the temerity to tell Gonz: “Walang personalan, trabaho lang!” Yeah…right!).
And as expected, the owners promptly responded. One ‘Joseph V. Diaz”, representing his daughter “Ms. Jhonamae Grace P. Diaz” (listed owner of “Tres Gracias Beach Resort”) sent back the notice with a scribbled assurance on the notice that the business tax for 2012 operations will be paid, specifying that its business to be generated will be from “10 cottages, variable sizes, rental rate from P100 to P500.” Once the business permits are issued, the city government will lend a semblance of legitimacy that will effectively bar city hall from demolishing the illegal structures. (It’d be interesting to read how COA will reflect the situation in the annual report).
So, what can one make of the efforts to legitimize the existence of illegal operations already threatened with demolition? In my book, it’s called “official cover-up” or “grand whitewash”!
Expect the mayor’s office to issue a statement on the results of the investigation next month (immediately after all the dancing and partying during the Christmas holiday) stating simply that 1) No one in the mayor’s office is involved in the fake waivers scam; 2) The owners of the 3 condemned beach resorts have filed for a restraining order stopping the demolition of their structures; 3) All the 3 beach resorts in question have complied with all permit and license requirements of the city. 4) Case closed.
And why would the beachfront racket scandal likely end this way? Mr. Lim is confident that the Mighty 8 in the city council will not stand up to him and will grudgingly yet obligingly move on as they always did. He knows enough having seen how easy it has been for him (and his son) to intimidate them each time they dare expose an anomaly in his office.
When this happens, the city will never get to unmask the people in the city hall who are behind the multi-million beachfront land racket, worse, the racket will continue with impunity whether or not the waivers from the city hall are “fake” or genuine.
Kaskasian met lay Dagupan!
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JUDICIARY’S INDEPENDENCE. If the “call to arms” reaction of the judges and court employees in the province to the CJ Corona impeachment (as conveyed and articulated by RTC Judge Ulysses Butuyan as president of the Pangasinan chapter of the Philippine Judges Association) is any indication of things to come, the country will likely find itself sinking fast in a political quagmire, seeing a divided people embroiled in long, divisive and contentious debates over constitutional power…the kind of power that doesn’t spell more jobs and less poverty for the people.
Note that the Pangasinan judges and the court personnel are not alone in this snowballing sentiment so it’s not difficult to see that as PNoy himself does more of his presidential saber-rattling (translation: bullying) before the media, the issue will polarize into two political views if it already hasn’t: Aquino dictatorship and judiciary independence.
I fear that if the impeachment trial drags on for over two months it wont be long before the people who rate PNoy highly today for his “honest” persona soon tire of his glib attacks on CJ Corona, and he will likely end up losing all the goodwill he has earned to this day. CJ Corona (and the judiciary) will merely appear as the hapless victim in the proxy war between Aquino ringleaders and GMA forces.
It is not CJ Corona who stands to lose much in this unprecedented word war for dominance. How much worse can it get for him after already being labeled as GMA protégé (or lapdog) even before he became CJ? He knew of the risks when he accepted his controversial appointment and decided to protect (shamelessly if you must) the interests of his patron in every way he could. Will a resignation or a successful impeachment hurt him any more than what he is being subjected to these days? Perhaps a bit more but it is not likely that he will be condemned as a corrupt CJ for his name was never dragged to any corruption scandal during GMA’s tenure.
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