Punchline

By March 18, 2013Opinion, Punchline

“To sin in silence….”

EFG

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

 

GUESS who’s been ominously silent about the sudden proliferation of fish pens in the city’s rivers and its tributaries in Dagupan City?  Mayor Benjie Lim and City Agriculturist Emma Molina suddenly lost their tongues but the mayor’s mercenaries masquerading as journalists have been busy denying the existence of the hazardous fish pens. They even had the temerity to claim that The PUNCHphoto last week was an old file photo circa early 2010. Ha-ha.

But knowing how the Lim administration operates, I am not even surprised that not even a pipsqueak is heard from the Ms. Molina whose office was always quick to trumpet its achievements periodically in the past. Perhaps it’s time she and her cohorts are reminded of what American President Abe Lincoln once said: “To sin in silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

By the agriculturist office’s silence, it would not be farfetched to conclude that hush money have reached a number of ATM accounts owned by some city hall officials and employees.

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The sudden mushrooming of fish pens can only mean one of two things: to enable Mr. Lim’s favorites to make hay while the sun shines until May2013, or to raise campaign funds for the massive vote-buying planned for the May elections.

I also wonder where the ever-efficient ordinance enforcer Butch Gutierrez is in all these?? He’s been extremely quiet as well. Have his principles already been compromised too by the Lim administration? Is he now swallowing everything shoved inside his mouth for the glory of the MadiLIM and MakuLIMLIM ticket?  What a waste.  I hope Mr. Gutierrez can still find reason to free himself from the heavy chain wrapped around his neck and start protecting Dagupeños from the inside. 

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TENS OF MILLIONS. By pursuing the construction of his P50-M hospital this year, Mr. Lim must really think Dagupeños are so gullible and stupid to agree that the city urgently needs his brand of maternal and child hospital. (Sure, the city needs it like a like a hole in the head).

Consider these. Dagupan is not situated anywhere near the boondocks, where no immediate medical attention is readily available to any resident, where there are no doctors and specialists on hand to serve the most basic needs for maternal and child care, where there are no tertiary hospitals where 21-expectant mothers can deliver their babies safely and well.

So what’s the urgency besides milking the city to fund the MadiLIM and MakuLIMLIM’s campaign activities? The Lim administration already got away with tens of millions from the Daongan ed Dawel, the unfinished ridiculous P10-M Tsunami Hill in Pugaro Island, the irregular and rush sale of the MC Adore properties, the unaccounted millions in revenues from the holding of past two years of Fiesta and Bangus Festival, and recently the protection racket for the fish pens? Is there no end to the MadiLIM and MakuLIMLIM’s and Judas 9’s greed feeding on the perceived gullibility and helplessness of Dagupeños?

Na-karma kayon sinsya!

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PNOY’S HOSPITAL VS. BSL’S.  The most recent and pertinent argument against BSL’S P50-M 21-bed hospital was the arrival of PNOY in the city to launch the expansion of Region 1 Medical Center! PNoy’s presence virtually left the BSL hospital exposed for what it is – a source for grand corruption.

Let’s hear Mr. Lim refute PNoy’s reference to R1MC as the fulfillment of his administration’s commitment to serve the region’s (particularly the city’s) health and welfare needs.

Let’s hear the Judas 9 and BSL’s desperate lapdogs tell PNoy that it is his R1MC expansion program that is one big deception, not BSL’s P50-M quest.

By the way, Mr. Lim’s critics inside city hall maintain that the contractor whom Mr. Lim has in mind to build his grand hospital should give everyone the clue what his hospital is really all about.  Make one guess.

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WHO NEEDS IT?  Setting the corruption issue that surrounds the BSL hospital and PNoy’s endorsement of R1MC, the most important arguments against BSL’s last folly before the May 2013 elections are:

1)   The safety and welfare of 300 pupils every year will be at risk if they are transferred to a 3-storey building. Imagine 300 frisky, energetic and boisterous kids running up and down the stairs, playing with the height of the building. That will send pupils and their parents daily to the BSL hospital. (It’d be the only morbid justification for his hospital!). If Mr. Lim wants to protect the children from the effects of flooding (his reason for relocating the school), he can ask the city to provide funds to elevate classrooms and pathways in all flood-prone schools.

2)   The health needs of the city’s residents, particularly, the pregnant women and children, can be served well and more by providing them with PhilHealth membership annually.  They can be served not only in one hospital but in all.  That shouldn’t cost the city more than P3-M! The city can even set aside P2-M medicine subsidy funds for the benefit of validated indigent patients.

So, who needs a P50-M hospital for 21 pregnant women (kuno)?  The Judas 9 and the MadiLIM and MakuLIMLIM ticket, that’s who!

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DRUGBUSTER? Last week, I came across a picture of Mr. Lim with Barangay Bonuan Binloc Kapitan Pedro Gonzales and Mr. Mata meeting with representatives of the Muslim community in Bonuan. The caption said, the Muslim community went to see him to pledge their support for MadiLIM and MakuLIMLIM ticket‘s reform agenda kuno. Hmmm they must know about an agenda that we don’t know about.

The last time the city hall went to town with this scenario, the trading of shabu in the community increased and no house of known illegal drug pusher or financier was demolished.  The timing of the “visit” cannot be perceived other than an attempt to seek another level of official protection after agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency collared and chased the hardcore traders, mostly residents of the Muslim communities in Bonuan.  Going by his track record, one can expect Mr. Lim to set his “reform agenda” into motion – to start intervening and foiling PDEA raids! I wish to be proven wrong.

The disreputable howlers of Mr. Lim tried to paint Mr. Lim as the city’s drugbuster by making him appear in pictures after a successful raid to give the impression that the series of arrests were directed by Mr. Lim! Duh? To claim that these were his initiatives is tantamount to him calling all past police chiefs coddlers of drug syndicates.  How else can he explain the dismal collective performance records of past police chiefs in the campaign vs. illegal drugs compared to that of former PDEA officer now Dagupan chief P/Supt. Christopher Abrahano’s record so far!

If Mr. Lim, indeed, was the initiator of the recent drug-busting in the city, why didn’t he do it earlier, after the signing of MOAs with teachers and business leaders, the dialogues with the leaders of the Muslim communities last year?  My sense of it is he actually staged those MOA signing and dialogues for another purposed – as a smokescreen to deceive the gullible public.

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KABALEYAN CLUB. I met balikbayan Bernard Valdez of California at the Pedrito’s, breaking bread with former mayor Al Fernandez. He confessed he had long wanted to be a member of The PUNCH Kabaleyan Club but wasn’t sure how to remit his membership fee. He promptly reached for his wallet and asked me to receive his fee on the spot! Thank you, Bernard! My sincerest gratitude too, to Wenceslao Gelllido of Texas for remembering to renew his membership this year! To our kabaleyans overseas, thank you for believing in The PUNCH’s mission.

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