Punchline
The skeletons of the Lim administration
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
The exclusive PUNCH story on the surprise status of the Dagupan City government’s purchase of the MC Adore Hotel is actually just the tip of the iceberg.
The Fernandez administration is showing some diligence in investigating and establishing the true status of the controversial purchases of the Benjie Lim administration. And if Mayor Al will remain uncompromising, City Legal Officer George Mejia can uncover more details about how our city officials then conspired to lie and deceive Dagupeños, robbing the city blind.
For starters, the Lim administration, backed by then chief Onor-onor Teofilo Guadiz III and his cohorts, justified the purchase of the over-priced 30-hectare lot in barangay Awai in San Jacinto ostensibly for a sanitary landfill. Never mind the over-price but there are already indicators that what the city government effectively bought was actually much less than 30-hectares!
Worse, the city government still doesn’t have a single square meter of it to its name. (Guv Spines should seriously consider making his provincial administrator Raffy Baraan explain his “past” before he gets dragged into a similar quagmire in the future).
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NAME A SUCCESS STORY. Dagupan City Administrator Alvin Fernandez is on a defend-mode for the planned bangus processing plant. He maintains that it will not compete with the exporters but will instead be an ally of exporters. Good.
But what he and others in the city government fail (or refuse) to see is the more serious concern that the city government is poised to lose all the city funds that will be poured into the plant’s operations (and the donated funds from the South Korean government for the construction) if the city government pursues its plan to operate and manage the plant.
Can Mr. Alvin perhaps cite a series of success stories where business or economic ventures thrived and succeeded because these were managed fully by people in government? Ok, probably asking him to name a series is asking too much. Just name one, Mr. Alvin!
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Going by its dismal track record, the city government refused to even hold anyone accountable for its failure to construct a sanitary landfill after the city officials colluded to buy the over-priced piece of land. Never mind that it cannot even close the open dumpsite in Bonuan that has been declared illegal by a national law because it doesn’t have the political will to do so.
The city hall could not even make the brand new dredging machine deliver the benefits it promised prior to its scandalous purchase. But is anyone being taken to task?
The Malimgas Market that was touted as the most modern, efficient and viable market to be managed by the government is already near bankruptcy. Today, it cannot live on its own revenues and is now being operated at a complete loss. Is anyone being held accountable?
What do you suppose will happen when the processing plant ends as the Malimgas market, sanitary landfill and dredging machine did! Will anyone in the city council ask for an investigation? Dream on!
Governance in our country is by orientation simply an expense-driven activity to provide basic services. But here’s how today’s public officials translate that: Spend what is not yours and to hell with the results!
This is why it has been held widely that governments have no business running any business activity. What the city government should do instead is to entice investors by crafting a set of economic incentives to help assure the risk-taking businessmen of modest returns on their investment.
The Fernandez administration can very well start with the build-operate-transfer scheme, and I believe Mr. Alvin is quite familiar having chased my then favorite mayor Benjie Lim around the city invoking the B-O-T rule to stop the MetroState project, and rightfully so!
What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, Mr. Alvin. Don’t start off with the wrong foot this time by learning from your own success story.
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WHO’S AFRAID OF BARANGAY ELECTIONS? Why are the reelected congressmen and mayors pushing for the postponement of the barangay and Sanggunian Kabataan elections?
Don’t even think for a moment that there is something patriotic about their reasons, i.e., election-fatigue, lack of funds for the election, etc. That’s a lot of hogwash! There is only one and only one reason for their objection to the barangay elections being held this year – they don’t want to shell out any dinero for the campaign activities of their favored barangay candidates whom they abused and exploited over the years.
A postponement will save them millions in campaign contributions for the people they promised to support! They are staving off “Payback time”!
That’s the bottomline.
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WANTED: PROBLEM SOLVING PEOPLE. Last Tuesday, I attended the dialogue between representatives of the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines and the Department of Health led by kabaleyan Sec. Francisco Duque III in a bid to stop the “hospital holiday” that the association threatened to do.
While the PHAP representatives admittedly had serious yet valid concerns about the law that prevents them from detaining their patients who are unable to pay their medical bills, they attempted to push back Sec. Duque to the wall by making it appear that the said law is to blame for all the ills of the health sector! To the amusement of many in the audience, they even made it appear that the anti-hospital detention law was the culprit for the recent closure of 8 hospitals in the country.
But the forever patient Duque was, nonetheless, just as quick to the draw and told off the doctor for distorting the facts and issues. What the PHAP representatives were not telling the meeting was the fact that the closures were caused by the unabated exodus of staff nurses and doctors (turned nurses) to overseas employment.
Fortunately, Senator Pia Cayetano, chair of senate committee on health, was there and helped clarify the issues, establishing two facts initially – 1) that it is illegal to detain patients, 2) That private hospitals have to be paid, and what remains to be resolved is how the hospitals should be paid and protected. It was only then that unanimity in purpose was finally achieved.
After getting their bearings right, the doctors finally followed the bidding of Sec. Duque to work on doable solutions which led to the eventual cancellation of the announced “hospital holiday”. So all’s well that ends well.
But things could have moved faster in that and in most other meetings if Pinoys are more inclined to become problem-solvers instead of being part of the problem, foisting problems after problems on themselves that inevitably lead to paralysis of the mind.
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The PUNCH condoles with the family of our late colleague in the industry, Phil Caracas. Phil will be remembered as one of the revered stalwarts of newspaper publishing in the province having pioneered Pangasinan News.
(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/punchline/)
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