Bangus Scandal 2009

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

Typhoon Pepeng after all was not all about devastation of everything good. Its wrath was about a pointed message to the Dagupan City Hall – “I destroyed your friends’ illegal fish pens!”

Indeed, Dagupan City Administrator Alvin Fernandez has some real explaining to do about the report of the city agriculturist that more than 50% of the fish pens allowed to operate in the city were in fact operating illegally!  Gosh, he gave the city the impression that the regulation of the fish pen has always been under tight control under his close watch.  Well, it’s not what appears today. It’s more like he was under the illegal fish pen operators’ tight control and closely watched! In return for what? I shudder at the prospect.

Could this be the reason why the dredging machine was merely parked uselessly in a secluded area in Salapingao for too long? To keep the illegal fish pens safe and unmolested?

City Councilor Lino Fernandez, himself a fish pen operator, also must explain how he could feign not knowing about the fact that many of his friends in the industry were in fact cheating the city government all this time? Yet, he has the temerity today to appeal for his ilk a reduced fee using the series of typhoons and flooding as the culprit. I say, the fish pen operators do not deserve a single consideration for the series of cover-ups they have done for their friends for the past years, and certainly not for the illegal operators themselves.  For his part, his is a clear case of conflict of interests and delicadeza dictates that he stops being the influential spokesman for the fish pen operators.  Mahiya ka naman, Mr. Councilor! Or was that part of the deal?

And I am also greatly disturbed that Councilor Alfredo Quinto Jr., in his capacity as chairman of the committee on agriculture, would like people to think that it is the ordinance that may be defective and not its enforcement!  Mr. Quinto does not appear naive to me but he seems to try hard and wants to look like one in this particular case.  Mr. Councilor, it’s really elementary.  Shouldn’t the first concern of the committee is to find out who was sleeping on the job? Who enjoyed the fruits of the illegal operations? Who were and still are the “favored friends” of the Al Fernandez administration? Who are parts of this conspiracy to rob our city blind? How much in revenues were lost?

Perhaps, Mr. Quinto is reluctant to ask such questions because in his feeble judgment, these are not pertinent in matters of questions of influence peddling and protection rackets. If so, may I then simply pose to him the only question that’s uppermost in our people’s mind today: Are you part of the conspiracy?  Lest you forget, as head of the committee, you, too, are a logical suspect. If you are not, then you owe it to our people to find out who they are! But please don’t insult our people’s intelligence by discerning outright that the problem lies in the law it makes people think you are another Mr. Onor-onor of this era.

Thank you Ms. Molina for your information the city owes you this one but you are not off the hook just yet. You have yet to tell the city all you know about the full sordid details of this wholesale fishy scandal.

Ladies and gentlemen of the city hall and the city council, the s__t  just hit the fan, in case you didn’t notice.

* * * * *

HERE WE GO AGAIN. As we go to the press, the battered province is again on a high alert level for the third time in two weeks, this time for another possible onslaught by Typhoon Santi.

But the mood is perceptively different. No longer displaying signs of helplessness and fear, our people, displaying the true grit of veterans of recent bloody, muddy battles, are showing more determination and preparedness to survive another round of nature’s wrath.

They are somewhat assured for now that the officials of San Roque Dam would no longer be so stupid and insensitive to risk another faux pas lest the latter see themselves being flushed out with the dam water by the gateways by an irate people themselves.

* * * * *

The public hearing and investigation of San Roque Dam officials by the provincial board, as one may have expected, could only result in utter frustration, if not complete helplessness, in the face of the stock technical answers from the dam’s officials.

Understandably, the only way the damn-dam officials can respond to save their necks effectively is to give responses that digress from the board members’ line of thought by providing nothing but technical data. The capitol officials wanted them to explain why lives and properties had to be lost, and the damn-dam officials just stoically rattled off figures anent the dam’s operations to get away with murd.. er,  the message: Not our fault!

With hindsight of what had been served in the past by the same bunch, what the board members should have done simply was to read minutes of the group’s last appearance before the board, how they explained themselves for the flooding then caused by San Roque, then how described how the dam waters again caused destruction in the same and added areas and finally ask pointedly what would their alibis be this time.

If the board members would have only taken time to study the damn-dam officials’ earlier statements, the latter would have found themselves tongue-tied with nothing much to add.

But that hearing will again be pointless and another exercise in futility if the board decides not to file cases for criminal action against the dam’s operators and dam’s top executives.

Surely, that public hearing cannot possibly end with a: “Ah ganun ba yun? O sige, don’t do it again, ok? Ingat! ”

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