Think about it
Belen, the reluctant politician
By Jun Velasco
“Private victories precede public victories,” Steplen Covey
ALUMNI of the Dagupan City National High School are in festive mood knowing that the construction of their Abong na Alumni is going on a fast pace … “in time for its completion on December 28, the grand alumni night,” says alumni association vice president Manny Roy.
For years, that piece of unfinished infrastructure had been the target of derision because of its laggard, off-and-on construction work probably due to lack of funds.
Pierced by sympathy for this dismal fact of life, then Mayor Al Fernandez, partly city high alumnus appropriated from city funds some P2-million to speed up its completion.
The alumni assn team of Ope Reyna and Manny Roy, president and vice president respectively, seems to be working wonders. Their names “Ope” and “Manny” make good combination who know how to “operate” and raise money in order that the ”abong na alumni” of city high would be a reality.
Those who have not responded to Alma Mater’s call might as well do it NOW!
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Beware of China’s bullying. The Chinese don’t even hide their schemes anymore. It’s extra risky to be asking the U.S. to come to our aid; it would be a magnet to attack.
We’ve had a 2-week interaction with China’s toughest journalists in Beijing a decade back, and we found their friendly smiles enigmatic and self-directed. As the idiom goes, you’d only get a Chinaman’s chance when dealing with a bully. Help!
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Did you know that Belen Fernandez (formerly Belen Lim, “but no blood relation with Benjie Lim”), the heavyweight public servant became a politician by accident?
And a reluctant candidate for councilor in Al Fernandez’s ticket years back? Yes, during the Cory Aquino presidency.
She told us in a chance interview that a political life was farthest from her mind even when Al Fernandez and then Senator Leticia Shahani persuaded her to run for councilor.
She said she was already content being the trusted one of the family to take the lead in running the family business due to her father’s health. She recalled that she had avoided campus politics as a business student of the University of Luzon. She was serious though in business and was, as everyone could see for himself, a great success. With Belen at the helm of the CSI Group of Companies, could there be any more evidence of success?
One after the other her “business empire” starting with the CSI (City Supermarket Inc.) downtown grew like mushrooms that now covers parts of Ilokoslovakia (La Union and Ilocos Sur). She said it was her wont to be kept busy looking for ways to enlarge her territory of service in the quickest and effective way possible. The result? Hundreds, nay thousands of people have been trekking to her for help.
As in every endeavor, opposition forces are inevitable, a fact, she said that required the use of smart strategies “so that our good and noble intentions are not thwarted but on the contrary, advanced.”
She believes, she said, that all her actions have been in accord with law, the rule of law, and the code of moral conduct. Hasn’t she been besieged at any time by the issue of conflict of interests, a bane which afflicts leaders of business who style themselves as guardians of the public interest? We cite Senator Manny Villar who must have missed the presidency on this account. But in a local scale we tend to concur with Belen and, for that matter, her business and eminent political rival, Mayor Benjie Lim, in the manner they are guided by Steplen Covey’s principles as summarized by David Star Jordan who said “There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.”
Belen has been in fight mode vis-à-vis projects of the mayor she charges as self-serving. This time, she wants to show that in the conflict between business and public interests, the latter prevails. It’s a tall order, but she’s been in it and wants to take it to the people on election day.
She has gone a long way indeed. Unlike Benjie who has charted his stars to political power, Belen, like her idol, the late Cory Aquino, simply did her home chores as a good family business manager and ended a public servant. She is someone to watch in the power game.
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NOTES: That news we heard about Colonel Sonny Verzosa assuming the provincial police director is a whiff of fresh wind. The son of the late former mayor Mariano Verzosa of Lingayen. Sonny is familiar if not master of the Pangasinan terrain. Good Luck!
Newly anointed Fishpond owners and operators president Ed Maramba has in his pond “Bangus Obama,” a color black Bonuan bangus. We wonder if it has any siblings.
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