Punchline
Another “deal” coming up
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
HERE we go again. Another potential business deal “made-in-heaven” for Mayor Benjie Lim.
The Dagupan City government, under a Lim administration, is back to its nefarious buy-and-sell practice that always leaves the city shortchanged, if not defrauded.
The signs are all there. Mr. Lim is curiously exhibiting peculiar interest to see the city sell the land on which the old MC Adore stands to a surprise buyer on buyer’s terms!
It will be recalled that Mr. Lim hastily made the city buy the hotel property in 2002 (courtesy of his onor-onor council) on the pretext that the city needed a location like the hotel’s on which to build a new city hall. However, after it was purchased, Mr. Lim was never heard to have directed the preparation of a plan and budget for the renovation of the old hotel. Instead, in a bid to disguise what appears now as a premeditated deception, his administration went through the motion of attempting to lease parts of the dilapidated hotel building to imagined interested government agencies. And as one might have expected, no government agency head was crazy enough to deal with the city on its “as-is-where-is-without-improvement” offer.
Now that Mr. Lim is back at the helm calling the shots for the city again, he has yet to be heard suggesting any development plan for his white elephant creation until now. And it’s not about its development but its turnaround sale for a buyer’s benefit.
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Now, it’s all becoming crystal clear that Mr. Lim had plotted the purchase of MC Adore property in 2002 as a buy-and-sell business proposition all along using the city’s funds, not as the site for the new city hall. That makes me wonder how much he earned as agent’s commission for getting the city to buy the property. I suspect he would have manipulated to have the city sell it early on if his son Brian had won as mayor after him. But now that he’s back on the saddle, Mr. Lim is following his old game plan – breathing down on the city council to sell the property pronto!
So I could not help but smile when I read that one of the buyer’s terms was for the city government to assume payment of the agent’s commission. By that term, it could only mean that it was the city that is offering the sale. But who in the city offered the MC Adore without any authorization from the city council?
Could the agent be the same person who brokered the sale of MC Adore to the city? Make a wild guess.
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LEGIT OFFER. I certainly cannot fault the prospective buyer from seeking the best deal he can get from this transaction because that’s completely legit for a businessman worth his salt to maximize profits for his company. The offer is legit and its terms, though seemingly disadvantageous to the city, are certainly what should be expected to start a negotiation.
For the buyer, it’s plain business and an opportunity for profit. The problem lies with the seller (or should I say, the agent) whose keen interest and motive for the immediate sale by the city government is highly suspect.
Indeed, the city government could benefit from such a sale since it is ostensibly disposing of a white elephant, a useless asset for the city government, presuming of course, that the price tag is correct. (Mr. Lim’s slip began to show when he manifested keen interest in accepting the buyer’s terms without any recommendation as counter proposal for the city’s benefit).
It’d be interesting to note what the city council’s counter-proposal will be and Mr. Lim’s reaction to it.
So if the city must sell, it must not be on Mr. Lim’s account and terms. At the very least, the buyer should shoulder the agent’s commission to dispel suspicion of a conspiracy to defraud the city.
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But I also don’t entirely fault Mr. Lim or his unnamed crony for trying to ink another “business deal” at the expense of the city.
The city has seen how Mr. Lim has so far gotten away with all the scandalous deals that he initiated for the city – all grossly disadvantageous to the city – with so much ease. He was never made to account for these, not even through investigation by the city council in aid of legislation. So why not another deal?
For instance, I find it distressing that Mr. Lim has not been called by the present city council to explain how and why the city lost the 30-hectare land intended for a sanitary landfill project after paying his business crony P16M (for a land that was worth P7M) under his watch.
Mr. Lim will expectedly lean on the city council because he knows only too well from recent experience that its members will succumb to his pressure. After all, didn’t he get away with the scandalous overpricing of goods in the name of a feeding program for poor children even after the documents were unearthed during the budget deliberation? He was not even called to a hearing to explain the illegal release of millions in calamity funds to his favored barangay kapitans without the benefit of a declaration of state of calamity in the city. He is also getting away without need to explain why the city’s dredging machine was sold merely as scrap metal to a political ally.
But I find even more worrisome now is the growing impression among residents today that the city council is slowly being molded into another onor-onor council by sheer intimidation, not by special favors.
I pray the young councilors in the majority would soon come to their senses and realize what their sudden passivity is doing to the city. (The councilors in the minority must be having a good laugh at their colleagues’ inability to stand up to the corruption at the city hall).
I do pray that Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez would soon exact results from her fearless, uncompromising leadership to stop corruption in the city hall here and now for the city’s sake.
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THE SEAL AS COLLATERAL. This corner congratulates Alaminos City and the eight other towns for earning their Seal of Good Housekeeping (SGH) for good governance. The set of criteria for the awards program is a no-nonsense approach for instituting reforms and to combat corruption in office. In sum, it upholds transparency and accountability as basic keys to good governance.
The plan of DILG Sec. Jose Robredo, therefore, to make presentation of the seal a requirement by government banks before any loan request could be acted upon is a step in the right direction. Such a requirement will help resolve political impasse in the name of good governance as seen in the town of Bani. It will be recalled that both contending parties, the mayor and some councilors, are invoking good governance as their motivation for pressing for the release and the blocking of the release, respectively. If Bani had earned its SGH, the councilors would know better than to block the mayor’s plans.
What severely compounded the level of corruption among local government units was the national policy of government on development loans. By merely presenting their respective future Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) as collaterals, government banks readily approved the loan requests. This policy fed on many corruption-tainted projects. It didn’t help to moderate politicians’ greed. This was true in the case of Dagupan City.
The seal is definitely a more valuable collateral than the IRA.
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NOT ABOUT STUPIDITY. Here’s an interesting anecdote on the chopped chopper deal incriminating former FG Mike Arroyo.
His lawyers claim that in spite notwithstanding the verbal claims of many at the senate hearings, there is no document to prove that Mr. Arroyo owned, much less signed documents to prove his links to the scandal.
At his recent presscon, Senator Alan Cayetano had this to say to Arroyo’s lawyers: “Mr. Arroyo is not being accused of stupidity but of corruption.”
Touché!
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