Lomibao’s “Strike-One” policy

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

In 2005, Chief PNP Arturo Lomibao had warned police officials across the country about his “Strike-One-and-You-Are-Out” policy in the campaign against jueteng.
That sent some shivers down the spines of the “jueteng-protectors” in the pockets of the jueteng lords. I honestly thought it was one helluva demonstration on how to discipline the organization. Not even then Chief PNP Panfilo Lacson who managed to earn an unprecedented 30% approval rating for the PNP talked tougher than that.

But if you are not hearing them brave words from him again, and jueteng is on the upsurge, you have to understand the context within which Mr. Lomibao mouthed these. 

It was made when his leadership was severely questioned during the senate hearing on the jueteng operations in the country. In fact, he was named by one of the witnesses as among those who protected jueteng in the region.

Well, the senate investigation is over, and he got out of that largely unscathed. He will soon retire and needs all the friends to boost his chances at being the next NBI director.

So, it’s easy to understand why Mr. Lomibao does not want to rock the boat at this time. Less talk, less mistake. Less action, more friends.

In the meantime, let’s brace ourselves for the continued upsurge in the operations of jueteng. The word is out that Mr. Lomibao’s “S-O-A-Y-A-O” policy has been shelved.

Read the kobradores lips they speak volumes.  “Tuloy si Ligaya”.

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SLEEPING ON THE JOB? Dagupan Police chief Edgar Basbas has been getting glowing praises for his station’s improved efficiency in crime-solving.  But in our book, he has yet to put or shut up on his station’s inability to check the rising tide of criminality involving criminal “fraternities” that have been hiding behind the city’s schools’ walls.

A crime committed inside schools, or violence committed by students belonging to school fraternities is still a peace and order issue right along his alley. As chief law enforcer, he cannot escape culpability for these crimes whether these are committed on the streets or not.

Judging by the growing frustration of school officials in the city, Mr. Basbas has been sleeping on the job. He should feel insulted that the Peace and Order Council is seeking relief from the sangguniang panglunsod just to avert the worsening situation involving the punks in their schools.

From where I sit, I sense that the school officials are still being polite to Mr. Basbas (which I find unproductive). The bottomline message of that resolution seeking relief from the councilors is that they are losing their confidence in the police chief. Ouch!

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ACCOUNTABILITY RULE. There is one Dagupan City councilor who is going out of his way teaching a thing or two about transparency and accountability. 

Councilor Alex de Venecia, as 2005 Hermano Mayor, has filed an accomplishment report, make that an audit report, on how funds were used and spent for the 2005 Dagupan fiesta. Read the highlights of his report in this week’s issue.

But the same cannot be said of Councilor Nic Aquino, the 2004 Hermano Mayor of the city fiesta. He refused to account for the monies he received from both the city government and the private sector.

He was reported to have received P3 million from the city coffers, a funding that was prohibited by law. But he managed to escape accountability and culpability because Mayor Benjie Lim himself refused to make him account for it. Worse, his colleagues at the city council also refused to make him account.

As things went, one can easily deduce that the principle of the “division in the house” was again applied, at the expense of the city’s taxpayers.

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As we go to the press, a city hall insider forwarded the information that again, Councilor Nic  Aquino, this time as chairman of executive committee of the 2006 Bangus Festival,  was blest with another P2.8 million from the city’s coffers ostensibly to bankroll the recent Bangus Festival.  

 Again, we are seeing the Lim administration flouting the law all over again. And there are  no indications that Mr. Aquino will be made to acknowledge receiving the funds much less account for them.

Will Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez or any of the councilors finally find his/her voice to make the mayor and his “Side-Nic ” account for the people’s money? Or has another “division in the house” already made the whole thing moot and academic?   

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MR. POLITICALLY-MOTIVATED. I was shown copies of recent issues of some local weeklies where articles, written by Mayor Benjie Lim’s “medya-medya” boys, appeared. These were clearly meant to be my “payback” for the PUNCH articles about BFAR’S findings about the dangerous levels of coliform bacteria found in the city’s rivers.

They charged that the stories and my columns were politically motivated. Their proof? That I lost “miserably” in the 2000 mayoralty elections. Hahaha! (They surely wasted a lot of ink and space on me, and am flattered).

What the overnight experts on “Ermin” failed to comprehend was I had no regrets doing the 2000 campaign for an impossible mission because unlike them I got the chance to do a reality check on the extent of corruption and negligence that left the city high and dry for decades. It might also interest them to know that my campaign was fully funded by Dagupeños who believed in my advocacy. I didn’t have to spend a single centavo. Now, I don’t know how that can make me bitter.  

But ok, in a way they are right…I have lost a hundred battles in this endless war for good governance in the city and in the province since the 70s.  Since corruption almost always won in the past, that makes me a really bad loser, right?

So if losing these battles make me “politically motivated” in their small minds, then so be it. But I have always harbored this same motivation and am not about to give up being “politically motivated”, not now, not after 3 decades of “losing” so there. Call me “Mr. Politically-Motivated.”

What about you guys?  What’s your motivation?

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I honestly couldn’t care less how Lim’s “medya-medya” picture me in their columns (and radio programs) but what bothers me deeply is reading how low and how far some of them are prepared to go to curry favor from their politician-clients.

They, too, have become mute and blind to the severity of the problem – the worsening pollution of the city’s rivers – and simply chose to ape and mimic every word of their patron, Mayor Benjie Lim, like true jukebox kings. I guess it’s really so much easier to shoot a messenger (and earn from it) than to decipher a message (and earn nothing for it).

I can only hope that all their trashy “Punch-and-Ermin-bashing” was well worth it for them. Honest!

 

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