WAS the passage of the Dagupan City’s 2024 annual budget after more than two months delay, indeed, a reason to celebrate? Hardly.

From time immemorial, a budget, whether for home, education, vacation or for governance, technically speaks of money  that makes things happen. Families and corporations save for it, so does government. It’s a tool that guides, directs and inspires stakeholders to realize plans and achieve success in an undertaking.

This was not the case for Dagupan City and its people.

The passage of the city’s 2023 and 2024 annual budgets in Dagupan City was hardly for any of the above purposes and intentions, contrary to what the law explicitly provides for.

When opposition Councilors “Red” Erfe-Mejia, “Alfie” Fernandez, “Dada” Reyna-Macalanda, “Manang Celia” Chua-Lim,  “Irene” Lim-Acosta, “Alvin” Coquia and “Marilou” Fernandez decided to do all to turn the routine passage of two annual budgets into a diabolical pursuit for their devious political end, there could be no reason to celebrate their passage.

The seven councilors saw the process as an opportunity to weaponize it for their despicable objective – to serve their demand for more money for themselves. In brief, they were not even the least coy to demand entitlement for P100,000 in “monthly allowance” via allocations for “ten job order employees” just because they were elected.

Failing to get what they wanted, the 7 councilors turned the city government as their battleground to counter and block any and all initiatives of the Belen Fernandez administration to deliver public services. It hardly mattered to them if the governed in the city were deprived of services, i.e., from payment of benefits and salaries of city hall employees to the establishment of a Mother and Child Hospital, etc.

The seven councilors even had the temerity to attempt to render the office of the presiding officer powerless, stripped of authority to rule on parliamentary rules.

Celebration? The passage of the 2023 and 2024 annual budgets should instead serve as an occasion to condemn the actions of the seven councilors that not only destroyed all protocols and rules for good governance but held the general welfare of their own constituents as hostage to serve their insatiable greed. What’s most regrettable is to see the Belen Fernandez administration refusing to make them account in court.

So let their names hang in the city’s hall of notorious and corrupt, for this generation and the future to remember their once deplorable, unprincipled and unspeakable designs on the city.

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