Punchline
Denial King today, White Elephant King tomorrow?
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
DAGUPAN City’s Mayor Benjie Lim is undoubtedly on a denial mode, making him the city’s runaway “Denial King”.
First, he acts and talks today like the failed sanitary landfill that cost the city a whooping P16 million never happened. He even had the gall to suggest in a recent symposium that each district in the country should have a sanitary landfill when he can’t, or refuses, to explain how the city lost ownership of the 30-hectare land in San Jacinto after he made the city buy it, overpriced by P9 million.
Before Mr. Lim again tries impressing others with his ‘vision’, he owes the city a credible explanation why he should not be accused by the people for engaging in what now appears to be a scam. Records at the Department of Agrarian Reform already show that the land in Barangay Awai that the city paid for has always been covered by land reform and, therefore, was never owned by the city even for a day after paying his friend Jose Mariano Cuna, the surprise landowner, the full sum. Worse, when the national government asked the Lim administration then to present its claim, the city government under his stewardship, defaulted. (Former city legal officer Geraldine Baniqued should also be made accountable for this legal mess that we now spell as S-C-A-M.).
But I doubt if Mr. Lim would care to explain anything. Instead he will be content being known as “Denial King”. So I challenge him to present himself to the city council to explain and show documents about his failed vision if only to give meaning to his touted “shared responsibility” slogan. Or is he inclined to deny, too, that it was his vision?
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Then, he conducts himself like he never had anything to do with the prompt purchase of the derelict MC Adore Hotel in 2002. He appears ready and too willing today to dispose of the white elephant pronto that he created without any thought to what he promised he would do from the purchase. It will be recalled that Mr. Lim in his first term as mayor, negotiated for the purchase of the property through the Assets Privatization Trust for P50 million and regaled the city with his ‘vision’ to make it the site of the new city hall. After making the city buy it, he never came close to drafting a plan on a scratch paper to demonstrate his ‘vision’. He just went through the motion of ‘negotiating’ with various government offices instead to occupy the place knowing fully well no agency in its right mind would move in the condition it was in. It was obviously meant to be just another real estate ‘deal’ for the city hall’s occupants, a fact he will surely deny.
He’s back at the helm as the city mayor, and you wonder why he still hasn’t shown a plan even on a paper napkin about his plan for the conversion of the old hotel for his new ‘vision.’ In fact, he conveniently says today that he’s “not inclined” to use it for any purpose so he promptly sent a recommendation letter for an offer-to-buy by a prominent realty company to the city council and wanted to rush the sale. So today, he denies rushing the sale and even remarked the offered price is too low but not until after the PUNCH reported the event and his unusual interest in the sale. As he later admitted, “as a businessman,” he saw an opportunity to dispose of properties. I rest my case.
What happened to his touted vision for the city hall? Obviously, he has none, never had any…he just talks about it casually and nothing else. So why did he make the city cough off P50 million? That’s the P50 million question for Mr. Lim.
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And here’s another Lim folly in the making that will surely turn out to be another serious disservice to the city.
Like the members of the city council, I cannot fathom why Mayor Lim is hell-bent on building a hospital and demolish the classrooms. I can only discern private business interests as the ulterior motive to benefit some pockets.
First of all, it’s bad enough that city schools are overcrowded and children have to contend with several shifts with limited time for serious study and now the city hall wants to compound the overcrowding at the West Central Elementary School I and II by transferring more students to it all because he wants a hospital exclusively for Dagupenos? Duh?
Secondly, education now has the highest priority in many countries, including the Philippines. The PNoy government is tirelessly and continuously seeking to provide more resources and facilities for the education of today’s children and next generation’s. It realizes that without proper education, poor families will never have a chance to get out of their impoverished state. Why would a city government insist on further compromising the future of the city’s children when it doesn’t have to?
Make a wild guess.
This convoluted sense of priorities and vision of the mayor will soon take a heavy toll on the residents and, unfortunately for the city, he will again not be held accountable once the negative impact is felt and realized. Galing-galing nya!
Foisting merely the need to help the sick among the poor as the advocacy, note that he again conveniently is silent on the fact that his planned hospital will become another white elephant. The city simply cannot afford to subsidize a hospital’s operation perennially what with the high costs of maintaining a hospital, offering free services.
Remember his costly construction of the Malimgas Market in 2004 that he made the city take out a P281 million loan for? His ‘vision’ of a modern market kept the city in debt for years forcing the city to cut down on basic services because the city ended up subsidizing the market’s operation as it grappled with the high rate of amortization. The planned pay-parking on the 4th floor is a ghost area, and stalls on the lower floors continue to be abandoned because of prohibitive fees.
Why Mr. Lim wants the city to construct and support his ‘vision’ for a city hospital notwithstanding the presence of an efficient and well-equipped Region 1 Medical Center and 6 other private hospitals in the city escapes me.
Curiously, Mr. Lim is not dumb to know what fate awaits a subsidized city hospital yet he insists on constructing one. If his real agenda is really for the poor then he would have been the first to recommend to finally put the MC Adore hotel into good use by converting it into a moderate medical facility as an extension of the R1MC. But he didn’t and is obviously not interested. Methinks he wants the city to spend and take out a new loan for a new building and a host of brand new equipment.
I only pray that the city council, under Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, will finally have the spine to stand up to Mr. Lim on this issue for the sake of the city’s children. I hope the city councilors finally decide that politics must end where the people’s welfare is seriously threatened. (I say this because the city council has not even officially slapped the mayor on the wrist for the city hall’s unconscionable profiteering using the feeding program for malnourished children in the city as a pretext).
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Note: Another white elephant in the making is the Daongan sa Dawel. I know the city didn’t pay for its construction because I am not aware of any budget allocated for it. But watch out for Mr. Lim demanding reimbursement for whoever spent for it.
Then wait till the city government takes over the operation of the Seafood Processing Plant.
At the rate Mr. Lim is going, he might yet earn another moniker as the “White Elephant King” at the expense of the city’s residents and the business sector that pay the city’s bills.
(Mayor Lim even amuses me no end by constantly declaring to all and sundry that I have no idea about what I write in this column but he knows that I know… know enough to provoke him to refer to me as tanga during a press forum. So, far from feeling insulted, I feel vindicated by his outburst and name-calling).
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