GAB finally hits back at BSL

By April 12, 2010Headlines, News

RE-ELECTIONIST Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. finally spoke out against former mayor Benjamin Lim, his lone opponent in the mayoralty race in the May 10 election.

Lim castigated Fernandez labeling the latter as “absentee mayor” after filing his certificate of candidacy last year but Fernandez kept mum on the attack saying “there is proper time and venue to do this”.

And so on the first day of the campaign period, Fernandez, after defining his platform of government for another term, lambasted Lim by enumerating the latter’s failed projects as mayor of Dagupan.

The other members of the GAB (Gina de Venecia, Alipio Fernandez Jr. and Belen Fernandez) team backed up Fernandez with their own tirades.

The three GAB members denounced Lim for allegedly “mortgaging the future of Dagupan” by accumulating huge loans to finance his grandiose projects that failed.

Lim took out a P380 million loan to finance the construction of the three-storey Malimgas Public Market and the purchase of a dredging machine, to be paid in 15 years.

The loan, including interests, has ballooned to as much as P600 million which the present city administration is paying at the expense of social services programs.

They said the loan was resorted to after Lim used up the P145 million surplus fund that Fernandez left in the city coffer when he ended his nine-year term of office.

Aggravating the situation for the city, Mayor Fernandez said, is the operation of the Malimgas Market continues to be subsidized by the city government when it should be self-sustaining, pointing to the erroneous projections made by the city government to justify the loan.

Then, specifications of the dredging machine bought by the Lim administration government did not meet standards set for the city’s requirements and  has since become unusable.

Fernandez also pointed out that unlike Lim, his administration was never delayed in paying the city’s obligations to emergency workers, for electric bills and to other creditors despite the huge monthly payments for the loans.

Meanwhile, De Venecia, wife of 4th District Rep. Jose de Venecia Jr., translated Lim’s initials “BSL” as “Baon sa Loan” meaning  “deep in debt” pointing to the numerous multi-million loans that Lim, as mayor, secured for the city to finance overpriced projects.

De Venecia said Fernandez never resorted to borrowing money when he was mayor of Dagupan for three straight terms in 1992 to 2001 and again from 2007 to present and kept the city funds constantly in the black.

De Venecia is in the running to replace her husband and she is up against Lim’s wife, Celia.

In 2007, Rep. De Venecia, then still as Speaker of the House of Representatives, was challenged by Lim in the congressional race after being mayor of Dagupan for two terms. Lim lost to De Venecia by a wide margin.

For her part, Vice Mayor Fernandez said the city government has given up hope on recovering the 30-hectare lot bought by Lim administration in Barangay Awai, San Jacinto, ostensibly to be used as sanitary landfill. The land has already been taken by the Department of Agrarian Reform for distribution after the Lim administration defaulted in its claim of ownership after paying P16 million to Lim’s business associate, the surprise owner of the land.

The title to that lot was never transferred to the city.–LM

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