A blot in governance

WE’D like to believe that, finally, we’ve seen the last of the illegal fish pens in Dagupan City, given what the city legal office said – All illegal fish pens have to go!

For more than four years, the city agriculture office was tolerated to allow the continued operation of some 63 illegal fish pens that occupied almost more than 400,000 square meters (4 hectares) that polluted the city’s rivers daily with commercial feeds.

It was bad enough that the CAO deprived the city government of millions in revenues from what could have been penalties imposed on the erring fish pen owners but it chose not to, but the worst damage to the city was the serious siltation of the city’s rivers that aggravated the constant flooding in the city’s barangays.

This massive damage of the illegal fish pens to the city was acknowledged by Mayor Belen Fernandez herself when she recently ordered the intensive dredging of the city’s seriously silted rivers.

Why the city government, including the Sangguniang Panlungsod, allowed the CAO to subvert their authority, without even a single sanction throughout, will remain unfortunately a blot in the Fernandez administration’s record of good governance – because they tolerated the daily severe pollution of the rivers.

Century shockers

Donald Trump had just stunned the world by becoming U.S. president, beating the heavily favored Hillary Clinton in an election result unquestionably dubbed as the “Political Upset of The Century.”  A day before what the New York Times labeled as an “American Tragedy,” nine of our 15 Supreme Court justices allowed the body of Ferdinand Marcos—frozen/embalmed for the last 27 years—to be interred at the Libingan ng Bayani.  The High Court’s 9-5-1, yes-no-abstain vote virtually transformed Marcos from dictator, plunderer and killer of his own people into a hero for all ages.  If that wasn’t the “Shocker of The Century” insofar as Philippine history goes, we don’t know what is.  In life, as in death, Marcos can inflict pain on his woeful nation.  Horribly absurd is the fact that his heirs do not only lap it up over SC’s venomous verdict; they also unabashedly waltz into aberrations of ululations and psychopathic euphoria.

Indeed, evil genes die hard.

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