Punchline
Dagupan officials should hide in shame!
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
We are not a bit surprised by the recent 2005 report of the Commission on Audit listing Dagupan City as being kulelat in standing among the cities in terms of net income not only in Pangasinan but in Ilocos Region!
The city reported P18.9 million income (after suspending payments on its payables and canceling a number of development projects) trailing Alaminos City which chalked P53.3 million in net income, San Carlos City’s P79.9 million and Urdaneta City’s whooping P132.1 million!
Adding insult to injury, the municipalities of Sual (P92.7 million) Pozorrubio (P24.6 million) and Binalonan (P24.6 million) performed even much better than Dagupan City.
As things stand today, Dagupan City has lost its luster and prestige. It is no longer Pangasinan’s premier city, thanks to the Lim administration.
To Mayor Benjie Lim, City Administrator Raffy Baraan, Treasurer Romelita Alcantara, Onor-onors Teofilo Guadiz III, Vlad Mata and Nic Aquino (the mayor’s primary conspirators in the city council), and his platoon of consultants, time to run and hide in shame with your tails between your legs.
Kababaeng kayon amin.
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OF ASSETS AND LIABILITIES. Will Dagupan City have a chance at regaining its stature anytime soon? Am afraid, it will take another set of two mayors to offset what has been lost.
Consider the city’s outstanding liabilities.
The Lim administration borrowed money and spent its money like there’s no tomorrow. To cover the city’s graft-ridden projects, the city government accumulated P372.4 million in liabilities that includes bank loans used to build the over-priced Malimgas market, dredging machine, and the negotiated purchase of Mc Adore Hotel.
Mr. Lim and his cohorts will likely say – “These now count as assets.” True, the city registered the highest total assets with P713.7 million in assets. But these assets were clearly bloated by the amount spent for the overpricing.
“But the other cities have liabilities as well,” they are wont to say.
Again, it’s true. Urdaneta has P117.5 million, San Carlos has P135.3 million, and Alaminos has P24.1 million). Given what these cities have demonstrated as their potential to earn surplus revenues, they can easily wipe out these liabilities.
But Dagupan? Well
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ABSENTEE MAYOR. And while the city continues to burn, Mr. Lim (in a Nero-like fashion) has seen fit to leave the city for the nth time to be in China for his personal business and pleasure, leaving the city again to his vice mayor.
But even more damning for the city is the fact that not a single city councilor to this day has protested the habitual absence of Mr. Lim in the city. (Of course, the delinquent and absentee councilors like Messers. Guadiz and Mata cannot be expected to rat on their protector).
Not even Expedita Callanta, the DILG’s official in the city, has complained to her superiors about Mr. Lim’s constant travel to China without permission from Malacañang.
Meanwhile, Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez has been playing the role of a good boy scout. Given the number days he has assumed the reins of the city, he is the de-facto mayor minus the power. But sadly for him, if and when he finally seeks the mayoral post on a fulltime and permanent basis, his administration will continue to be plagued by these liabilities! And he will only have himself to blame because he, too, didn’t raise a finger to stop the raid of the city’s coffer by an insatiable cabal that he worked with.
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THE BATCH 2006 NURSES’ PLIGHT This corner has nothing but sympathies not only for the topnotchers but for the owners and faculty of the nursing schools and for all the examinees who fairly passed the 2006 board exams.
The nurses of Batch 2006 may cry to the high heavens till their faces turn blue over the unfairness of the situation that they now find themselves in but the stigma is already there. Even if the culprits are finally identified, charged and jailed, the stigma cannot and will not go away until the examinees have proven via the exams that they are competent to be part of the healing sector.
And the only way to do it is to retake the exam covering the two contested topics, Test III (Medical/ Surgical Nursing) and Test V (Neuro-psychiatric Nursing) established as being tainted by the leakage. Two very major subjects!
The issue at hand is no longer about grades and who topped the exams but whether the 2006 successful examinees can prove that they have what it takes to be a licensed nurse.
A retake of the two tests levels the field for everyone, including the topnotchers since their standing were obviously not affected by the cancellation of the two sets of questionnaires. Everyone reviews only for the two subjects and those who flunked earlier need not take the exams, naturally.
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PROFESSIONALISM. It is heartening to note that Health Sec. Francisco Duque III shares a “retake” view. Perhaps, making that statement was doubly difficult for him because a number of the topnotchers were graduates of the universities owned by his family and managed by his elder brothers Cesar (University of Pangasinan) and Gonz (Lyceum-Northwestern University).
A retake of the exam that may result in different grades for the successful examinees and can change the ranking in the process.
There’s another professional Duque for you.
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CHEATING IN 2004 ELECTIONS AND 2006 EXAMS. What is becoming comical and pathetic about the nurse exam scandal is the conflicting stand of Malacañang officials.
Executive Sec. Ed Ermita and Press Sec. Toting Bunye are playing their cards like they are still defending their patron President Gloria Arroyo against charges of cheating in the 2004 elections. “Those who passed must not retake the exam,” they chorused. Shades of “Mrs. Arroyo won the 2004 elections fair and square, she should not be impeached nor asked to resign.”
But Sec. Dante Ang, Mrs. Arroyo’s publicist, who was tasked to wade into the controversy by Mrs. Arroyo herself, is adamant about requiring the examinees to do a retake. (Mr. Ang was not among those who figured in the “Hello Garci” tapes).
Then, there is the Professional Regulatory Commission insisting that the successful examinees be allowed to take their oaths even before the issue could be settled beyond reasonable doubt as to what really happened. Again, shades of the House of Representatives and COMELEC that insist the election of Mrs. Arroyo was not tainted with fraud despite the revelations of the “Hello Garci” and corroborating documents and testimonies of witnesses.
At the rate Malacañang is covering up for dishonesty and corruption, you can be sure the 2006 nurse’s exam will not be the last cheating scandal that will knock out the country.
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