Sec. Arthur Yap is a Dagupeño

By Jun Velasco

MAYOR Benjie Lim, we’re sure, meant well when he had all those streamers “Dagupan City Must be Jueteng-free”  strung all over the city’s strategic street corners, but some naughty wags are quick to twist its meaning to mean that they (streamers) are an admission that the city is  not jueteng-free.

“Must be,” you know, is in the future tense, and the wags are twitting the no-kidding chief executive to be skirting an issue that has eluded authorities since time immemorial. As of this writing, we saw a jueteng cubrador making the rounds in Colonel Ed Basbas’ bailiwick.

On this account, our editorial consultant Gerry Garcia and this writer stumbled into the late Bayardo Estrada’s compendium of literary pieces (poems, editorials and column articles that date back to the  30’s in the Pangasinan Review which he edited with Maria Magsano, also long deceased)  that jueteng was already a hot item that was hard to crack in those days. Politicians, the local police, the church leaders and the media were also in the same hide-and-seek boat, and look at what jueteng has made of these age-old drives and campaigns even under its Number One nemesis, Bishop Oscar Cruz!

The sober-minded among us might be more sensible for proposing jueteng’s legalization. No, it’s not the case of “if you can’t lick them, join them” syndrome. Ask former President Ramos, one of the first to propose the legalize-jueteng   idea. That, to our mind, in light of Bayardo Estrada’s finding, should lick it.

*            *              *

Wherever you go today in Pinoy-land, you’d hear all kinds of “expert views and opinions” on the recent brouhaha that the last Nursing Board Exams has created because a few not-so-smart quick buck players who would usually bribe their way into the pockets of certain officers of the Professional Regulatory Commission and the Philippine Board of Nursing kick up their shit into the electric fan.

Our friend, Manila Times publisher Dante Ang, who chairs a powerful government office that takes charge of overseas Filipino workers, just gave a scary “expert” (sic)  advice  to require all the examinees (the honest and the leakage beneficiaries) to retake the board exams.

Off hand, Dante and the others who love to play hero at the expense of a well thought-out solution do not mind if those who went through the tough grind and passed the exams with a clean conscience would be victims of a grave travesty of justice.

Those of us who know how parents went through all the  heart-wrenching motions (pawning long-kept jewelries, selling a piece of property or the only cow the family had kept  for this awaited moment to qualify daughter or son for the Licensure Exams) frown on this sweeping “retake the test” decision.

What would be fair is to create a tough fact-finding body to ferret out the truth and punish the guilty. Some of the culprits in the shameless leakage issue   have been identified. It should not be difficult to pinpoint those who benefited from it.  Even if 99 percent of the examinees cheated, the lonely honest taker should be protected from the cheaters’ crime. It’s a travesty of justice if an examinee was made to suffer the crime of the cheaters.  This principle, we believe, is the guiding principle of a democratic justice system.

*           *            *

 Our kin, former Tapuac Barangay Captain Alfredo “Apring” Dawana, now a resident of San Francisco, California brought us to his idyllic Tocok “resort” in the Lucao-Carael basin where some l0-hectare “virgin” river is waiting to be tapped and developed.

He says he had Mayor Benjie Lim, City Administrator   Raffy   Baraan and City Agriculturist Emma Molina as his personal guests in the same resort, and admitted that in terms of business ideas, Mayor Benjie is unbeatable. He has asked his city officials-visitors to plot Tocok’s development which would include dredging and land filling to provide some 2,000 residents who live like Badjaos in the areaa decent housing.

We endorse the idea if only to further beef up the city’s enlarging property which PGMA and Speaker JDV cited during the Pantal Bridge groundbreaking.

*            *            *

NOTES: our item on Boy Rayos’ championing flood-hit residents along the Arellano-Bonuan Gueset area alerted Tapuac and Mayombo residents who want him to include them in his campaign too. We understand Boy’s ultra-sensitive nose was inspired by what he saw in San Carlos City in these rain-soaked days. “How come Mayor Jolly Resuello,   known as a ladies’ man, is  dry'” Boy asked…..Presidential Management Staff (PMS) Director General Arthur Yap, 40, one of the PGMA’s closest  advisers, is a Dagupeño. He was feted by his cousins when he came to preside over a convention of local officials from Regions I, II, and III and the Cordilleras to flesh out the President’s naming Northern   Philippines as the food basket of Asia. That makes him the third in GMA’s “kitchen cabinet,” along with Health Secretary Pingkoy Duque and Trade Secretary Peter Favila.         

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments