Punchline
ASNA for journalism
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
I AM personally humbled to be named one of this year’s ASNA awardees but equally elated for the recognition by the provincial government of the role that a community journalist plays in the shaping of the Pangasinan’s generation of people, their economy, history and culture.
What truly made the award more significant to me is the fact that Guv Spines and his administration had seen it fit to honor this community journalist in spite of the fact that I, through The PUNCH, had severely criticized a number of the Espino administration’s policies over the years. (“In fairness”, as they would say in showbiz lingo, it was just a few).
I certainly had not expected such an accolade since community journalists normally get some recognition perhaps as outstanding alumni of their alma mater or as an outstanding media practitioner by a civic club but never by a local government unit where they practice. It’s simply not the norm for government and politicians to honor a watchdog in their midst. Such an occasion (possibility?) occurs only posthumously. Most politicians can be moved to shower lavish praises and be extremely generous with undeserved admiration but only during necrological services for the journalist who just wrote 30 knowing that the pesky journalist lying in state cannot hear them anyway.
ABOUT RESPECT. I can’t blame skeptics in our midst who eye the motive for such a recognition today as suspect. Is the award meant to curry favor in the hope of forever gagging this community journalist?
Let me respond this way. Ever since Guv Spines took over the reins of government, I never felt the impression that the Espino administration took my critical views as being motivated by a political agenda in favor of another. My differing views, facts and assessments were rebutted with their own facts and assessments and that impressed me as the administration’s acceptance of a healthy critic-subject relationship based on mutual respect.
In this light, I’d like to believe Guv Spines sees community journalists around him as professionals just doing what they do best.
I, therefore, doff my golf cap to Guv Spines for the honor and respect he accords community journalists!
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STOP THE DROWNING. I’m afraid drowning of visitors in our beaches will continue until we adopt the total approach to prevent it. It did not surprise me, therefore, when more were recently reported to have drowned in Lingayen and in Dagupan beaches over the long holiday despite the installation of watchtowers or the deployment of so-called Water Search and Rescue (WASAR) teams. In fact, I expect more accidents.
The creation of WASAR teams is a damn good idea and certainly a step in the right direction as a response and reaction group – to search for and rescue drowning victims – but drowning accidents will inevitably happen NOT in spite of WASAR but because there are no trained and equipped beach lifeguards employed on a regular basis to stand guard (that’s why we call them lifeguards) in the area, and no colored buoys to warn of dangerous areas for swimming and wading.
The lifeguard is the frontline man while the WASAR is the reaction-support team.
By all means, the towns and cities that host beaches for leisure and recreation, should adopt the WASAR concept in tandem with the designation of trained lifeguards to be employed by the barangays.
Both must develop the discipline to scan the shoreline and swimming activities with eagle eyes every minute while on duty. (Texting, eating and smoking should not be allowed during duty hours because accidents happen any second of the day). They must be fully knowledgeable of the terrain beneath the beach water and trained to identify life-threatening waves at certain times of the day. Without any intensive training, the lifeguards and the WASAR teams cannot effectively function to save lives and help promote tourism.
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ANOTHER DEVIOUS PLOY. It looks like Dagupan Mayor Benjie Lim’s ploy to squeeze another precious P10.M from the city’s coffers through a supplemental budget, a week after the regular budget was passed, is not going to work this time. I am saying this with my fingers crossed!
The devious ploy is to force the hand of Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez and the Mighty 8 to grant additional funds because the listed beneficiaries of the requested supplemental budget are the city’s barangay kapitans! He was certain VM Belen and her allies will not dare deny the kapitans millions in spending money, not with the election just 12 months away!
The Lim-Mata tandem riders, who have nothing but contempt for the Mighty 8, believe that the latter does not have what it takes to deny the kapitans.
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Remember the illegal expenditure of more than half of the P7M fund programmed for the barangays’ health and environmental programs that Messrs. Lim and City Administrator Vlad Mata surreptitiously authorized to be used to defray the kapitans tour group to Singapore? The duo wiggled out of the controversy by initially saying the kapitans spent their own personal funds, finally ending with a “Lakbay-aral” scheme to could justify the tour expenses of the kapitans. The furor ended there.
Having gotten away with murder on that score, the Lim-Mata duo obviously want a repeat of the same pattern but this time to have more campaign moolah available to them, enough to set the tone for the launching of the father and son tandem for the 2013 polls: Benjie Lim for mayor –Brian Lim for vice mayor!
Consider the requested P6.8M to promote bangus in the barangays! (Gee, can’t the duo be more creative than that? Who needs to promote bangus in the city?). Then there is the P3.1M for environmental projects (again!) in the barangays and another P7M at the kapitans’ disposal for their participation in the Bangus festival (in spite of the earlier announcement of Councilor Lim that the city would not spend a single centavo for the festival)! That’s P16.3M for the kapitans to further tighten the hold on the latter and ensure their commitment to help make the Lim father-and-son rule the city with impunity from 2013 onward, with Mata as executor.
I pray that the Mighty 8 will continue to resist the pressure being exerted by the majority of the kapitans, they who are using their perceived political clout in the coming polls to blackmail the councilors to approve the budget. Anyway, as the political analysts that hold court in barber shops already know too well, the kapitans are already a lost political cause from the time they trooped to the city council to pressure the sanggunian to approve the supplemental budget and their P7 million. So why cater to them at all?
I do pray that the Mighty 8 will not be stupid as to provide the kapitans the wherewithal, P16M in cold cash, to be used against them knowing fully well that the kapitans already paid allegiance to the Lim royalty.
They must save the city from a future Lim-Lim absolute rule and the return of the contemptible onor-onors of the past!
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POSTCRIPT ON ASNA. After receiving the award from Guv Spines, Vice Guv Ferdie Calimlim and Little Guv Raffy Baraan, I addressed the audience and prefaced it with my own introduction of myself…pointing out my name while my face was being projected on the screen. It was not about conceit but to make sure that the audience knew that it was not Fire player Gonz Duque that stood before them. I recounted how Gonz was welcomed as a speaker by a group of Pangasinenses in the US with a streamer that, horror of all horrors, had my face in it, not his. Then recently, a local paper published an article in its front page critical of Gonz and made sure his identity was known by accompanying it with a picture. Again, horror of all horrors! Again it was my picture, not Gonz’s!
So I thought, enough is enough. If this is the curse that Gonz and I are being made to bear for life, I decided I wanted it to end that night. I’m sure Gonz felt the same way.
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