POLITICS HEATS UP EARLY IN DAGUPAN

WITH still three months to go before campaign period starts, the political fireworks in Dagupan City have already been lit. Come-backing mayor Benjamin Lim fired the first salvo.

Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, however, was just as quick to the draw and picked up the cudgels for the Fernandez administration.

Reacting to tirades from the camp of former mayor Lim who is running against re-electionist Mayor Al Fernandez Jr. labeling next election as a contest between himself as a performer and Mayor Fernandez, a non-performer, the vice mayor said, “If we talk of performance and non-performance, it is us who are on the performance side.”

With barely half a year left before the end of their term in office, she said the administration of Dagupan under Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. has been faithful to their 2007campaign promise of restoring good fiscal management of the city’s coffer.

She pointed out that their administration’s capability to enhance services and programs without the benefit of any new loan or new taxes even as they to keep up with payments for the series of loans obtained by the previous administration under Lim, and still distribute bonuses is performance.

The vice mayor said one of the most tangible proofs of performance is the city’s ability this year to distribute extra Christmas cash bonuses to its employees and other workers despite the financial constraints created by the Lim administration over a six-year period.

“The city government has savings realized from this belt-tightening measure and will now be used to bankroll the additional cash gifts of up to P10,0000 to reward regular and casual employees for their performance” she said during the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters sa Pilipinas forum last week.

In contrast, the vice mayor said the Lim administration has a lot of explaining to do for the series of projects Lim launched that did not benefit the city and fully drained the city’s coffer.

She cited the failed negotiation of the 30-hectare lot in Barangay Awai in San Jacinto purportedly for a sanitary landfill that resulted in the city’s complete loss in the project amounting to P16 million notwithstanding the evident overpricing that tainted the project.

She said under Lim, the city obtained another P280 million loan to build a three-storey market with a roof deck that has not earned anything for the city as promised but instead now requires a subsidy support from the city government.

Fernandez also said the city government is considering to sell the Mac Adore Hotel purchased by the Lim administration via a loan and later abandoned by his administration to rot as a white elephant.

The hotel building was envisioned to be re-constructed into the new city hall, but the vice mayor said it would actually be cheaper to construct a new building in another area.

The vice mayor chided the former mayor for failing to deliver basic services throughout his term and instead focused on costly infra-projects with little benefit that wiped out whatever savings his then predecessor, Mayor Fernandez left when he exited. —LM

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