THIS was the terse message that the seven opposition councilors at the Dagupan sanggunian got from Regional Trial Court Judge Michael Paul Israel, who junked the Special Civil Action No. 2023-0008-D (for Declaratory Relief with Prayer for Injunction and Temporary Restraining Order) filed by Councilors Librada Fe Reyna, Maria Lourdes Fernandez, Alvin Coquia and Redford Erfe-Mejia.

The political motive behind the filing of the case vs. Mayor Belen Fernandez, Vice Mayor Bryan Kua, Councilors Michael Fernandez, Jeslito Seen, Marcelino Fernandez, and Joshua Bon Bon Bugayong, former Sangguniang Kabataan Federation President; City Secretary Ryan Ravanzo; and the Dagupan City Legal Office was not lost to the court when it cited Proverb 3:7-“ Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is within your power to act.”

We can’t agree more.

For the past 20 months, the opposition has acted wantonly with impunity in obstructing the implementation of programs and without regard to the impact of their actions to the cause of the city residents whom they had sworn to serve.

Plainly obsessed with their number as the majority, they displayed such an arrogance believing that no court would deny them whatever was due them as the majority. Alas, the past court interventions and this most recent court decision proved them wrong.

They can’t seem to comprehend the impact of these unprecedented legal views on the legacy of their well-respected parents and generations before them, whose integrity was held high without question. All that matters and influences their collective actions apparently is the barkada (gang) culture of the old. Pathetic.

While they railed against the 60-days preventive suspension meted out on their allies Councilors Erfe-Mejia, Irene Lim-Acosta and Alfie Fernandez for their conduct unbecoming as public officials, yet they fail to consider themselves as fortunate because the jurisprudence from the Ombudsman on cases of delaying approval of annual budgets would have led to the summary suspension of all seven of them for six months.

They may have struck out today, but knowing what they are already capable of doing as a barkada, the city can only hold its breath for what awaits it in January when the 60-day suspension lapses. Or, will it see a reformed opposition?

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