Punchline
Molina keeps mayor guessing
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
THANK God, Dagupan Mayor Belen Fernandez left New York before some naughty elements caught up with her to buttonhole her on her pronouncements about the illegal fish pens in the city.
No doubt, anyone who heard her would have been easily impressed at how her administration has been doing a yeoman’s job clearing the city’s rivers of illegal fish pens. The problem is, I doubt if she knows the full story on what’s happening in the city’s rivers. I say this because I strongly suspect that City Agriculturist Emma Molina has been feeding her the wrong information all these years.
Two Fridays ago, I sought out Ms. Molina to establish her final count on the remaining fish pens. I called her office and the office personnel that took my call easily gave me the impression that Ms. Molina was in her office. But when she finally asked for my name, she came back to tell me that Ms. Molina was suddenly out of the office. So I asked for a return call. Then I decided to send her a text message, detailing my questions that I knew she could easily respond to.
Did I get a return call? No. Did I get a text reply? No. Did she bother to call our office for an interview? No. Why is she hiding? What is she hiding?
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INCONSISTENT DATA. This recent refusal of the city agriculturist to be confronted with her facts should make Mayor Belen start wondering about the veracity of the data she was fed all these years. In fact, she should begin to wonder whether the data (provided by Ms. Molina) she used in her panel discussion in that prestigious UN meet were all tall tales.
The fact is, local bangus fish pond owners consistently refuted Ms. Molina’s claims in the past, and continue to refute her reports to this day.
From the looks of it, Ms. Molina has taken it upon herself to make the city government helpless in order that the illegal fish pen owners can continue to harvest and restock, harvest and restock continuously for 3 years to this day.
If there are illegal fish pen owners who dare defy the city ordinance, blame it on Ms. Molina. At the rate her own count of the existing and demolished fish pens was constantly changing, one would think she was playing Sudoku on the Fernandez administration. The number she gives always depends on who stands to benefit.
In fact, if we go by the data she announced periodically and we published during Mayor Belen’s first term, there have been a lot of inconsistencies in the numbers that cannot reconcile with the last number.
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MOLINA’S UNTOUCHABLES. Recall that 2 weeks before the mayor left for the US, the mayor was made to believe by Ms. Molina that there were only two remaining illegal fish pens to be demolished and that these were covered by ‘land titles’. We reported this in our issue three weeks ago.
More than a week later, I was informed by the TF Bantay Ilog, that there are still about a hundred more illegal structures (that included illegal fish pens and oversized fish cages) to demolish. I can’t believe how Ms. Molina can deliberately make the mayor look naively gullible before her people.
The alibi that some of the some fish pens were ‘untouchable’ was raised (because of the claimed land titles) only during the first few months of the Mayor Fernandez’s term. Note: It was never raised during Mayor Benjie Lim’s term. But Ms. Molina obviously made it appear that Mr. Lim acknowledged the claim as legit, and this influenced Mayor Belen to follow suit.
So if Mayor Belen wants the true picture of the city’s river system, my unsolicited advice is for her to make time for a full inspection of the city’s rivers accompanied by the TF Bantay Ilog and members of the fishpond operators group (minus Ms. Molina guiding the inspection) and see for herself how far worse the pollution and the rampant violation of the city’s ordinance have become.
I’m afraid the longer Ms. Molina stays on as city agriculturist, the likelihood of Mayor Belen being charged by her political enemies before the Ombudsman is likely to happen. The possible charge? Dereliction of duty!
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TO KILL OR BE KILLED. There is a frightening albeit welcome development in the war vs. illegal drugs in the country. Drug lords and pushers are falling like bowling pins as special police teams appeared to have suddenly been jolted from deep slumber. They were gung-ho in eliminating notorious drug dealers obviously in response to Mayor Duterte’s challenge.
This has led to speculations that the killings were actually done to bury the secrets that the eliminated drug dealers had involving some police officers who protected them.
In sharp contrast, in Pangasinan there has been only one recent reported killing of an alleged notorious drug pusher by DDS. Unlike the spate of reports of the shooting of drug lords who purportedly resisted arrest, the killing and dumping of the body of the alleged drug pusher in Dagupan was plainly the work of vigilantes. Simply put, which situation should our communities accept? The killing of drug pushers “resisting arrest” by cops or the plucking of drug pushers from this earth by vigilantes?
But let’s skip the question for now and dwell on the case of the Pangasinan cops that have not gone as far as confronting known drug lords and protectors. So far, the provincial police have not been as bold as their counterparts in other places by simply conducting buy-bust operations and serving warrants of arrest.
Are the Pangasinan cops playing safe, not willing to risk rocking the boat content with just keeping a modus vivendi with the drug syndicates? Or are they just cautious not to cross the line to avoid being the next target of the drug syndicates?
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GUIDING LIGHT? The decision of Dagupan’s Barangay Gueset Kapitan Rico Mejia to declare war vs. illegal drugs in his turf was a smart move on his part, and a move welcomed by his constituents.
He made no pretense of being a clean-living guy. In fact, he openly admitted that he was once a user himself in the past and that made his decision to go up against the drug lords and pushers in his barangay credible.
Whether he did it to save his skin, having watched news reports that showed lifeless drug protectors sprawled on the ground because they resisted arrest is not really material at this stage. What needs worth watching is how he translates his new rhetoric into action. He admitted knowing who the pushers are and he said he has asked them to stop their nefarious activity. Fine, but did he submit his full list to the police? The barangay’s BADAC reportedly submitted only a few names but in his PUNCH interview published in last issue, he said all the sitios had at least 20 pushers.
It’s time for Kap Rico to mean what he says, and to say what he means!
There’s nothing I’d personally like to see than to watch Kap Rico succeed in leading the campaign in the city by example. If he can do a DU30 and echo the word STOP (borrowing Mr. Duterte’s angry word) in his barangay alone, he would make a huge difference in the city. This would be an enviable legacy that no other kapitan can match for a long time.
So far, he’s the only Kapitan who dared come out publicly without any direct prodding from the mayor or the police chief. Is there anyone else??
(For your comments and reactions, please email to: punch.sunday@gmail.com)
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