By Gonzalo Duque

 

I was happy to learn that the 2022 annual budget as proposed by Mayor Brian Lim was finally approved by the Sangguniang Panlungsod. But the report that the office of the mayor initially did not like to receive the approved budget was worrisome.

It appeared City Secretary Ryan Ravanzo and company did not take the matter sitting down. They sought help from DILG regional office in San Fernando, La Union. Thereafter, city hall received a call from the DILG ordering it to receive the approved budget ordinance.  And so it did, finally on June 15 at past 8:00 a.m.

So, the 10-day period for the mayor to approve or veto the ordinance started on the very day and hour the document was received. If the mayor does not want to act on the submitted document after 10 days, the same can be considered to have lapsed into law.

Maybe city hall thought that if they don’t receive the approved budget ordinance, it will prescribe. Wrong. It’s good that maagap yong mga ka-grupo ni Vice Mayor Bryan Kua and anticipated Brian’s flanking move.

But if the mayor exercises his veto power on the 10th day, he has to return the approved budget ordinance to the sanggunian on that day with his corresponding veto message. I think the majority still has the time and the number to override the veto.

But if Lim is humble enough to accept his resounding defeat (he lost by more than 14,000 votes), he will sign the approved budget to make this as his legacy, since it was he anyway who crafted the budget.

Are there  more tricks from Brian before he finally steps down on June 30? Abangan!

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During Mayor Brian Lim’s three-year stint at the City Hall, we heard that city hall was packed with members of the Jaycees, (the JCI or Bangus).  He literally surrounded himself with functionaries and factotums with Jaycees. 

There could be no question about it if the appointees were qualified for the job and not simply appointed because they were Jaycees. Did they have meritorious qualifications, i.e., academic achievements, civil service eligibilities and or PRC license, if any? 

Remember that prior to becoming mayor, he was the Jaycee World president and one time president of the Philippine Jaycees, so it was no surprise that he took the Jaycees in. Birds of the same feather flock together? 

Of course, it was natural for him to have his biases for Jaycees but that discriminated against members of other civic and fraternal organizations, including people in 31 barangays who, too, were as qualified, if not more qualified than the Jaycees.

It became so blatant that people viewed the Lim administration a Jaycee administration because it was the Jaycees that shared power with him to rule the city, not the other way around.

But methinks it was his complete reliance on his fellow Jaycees that could have spelled his meteoric fall from the pedestal of power. The Jaycees whom he appointed to rule with him (remember the Quadro de Jack) had no love at all for Dagupan nor its people but only for themselves. 

And when he trusted no one at city hall but his fellow Jaycees, it was to the detriment of old timers in the force, including many barangay kapitans. More about the Jaycees of Dagupan in my next column. 

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Here’s a flash back in history. Hours before the bombing of a Liberal Party rally at Plaza Miranda on August 21, 1971, Senator Ninoy Aquino was at our house at Loyola Heights in Quezon City in a meeting with my father Dr. Paco Duque, then LP provincial chairman of Pangasinan, and Vic Millora, then governor, who was nominated to run for Governor against NP’s Aguedo Agbayani, then congressman of the First District.

I was then a graduating college student so I eavesdropped on their conversation. They were about to attend the Plaza Miranda LP rally but were warned by Ninoy not to go. Fortunately, they decided not to show up in that rally.

The bombing of that rally was blamed on President Marcos but in later years, it turned out that it was the handiwork of the Communist Party of the Philippines, engineered by Joma Sison. That incident, precipitated the suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, and further fanned widespread student activism and the “parliaments on the streets.”

Then on August 21, 1983 Ninoy Aquino was shot dead later at the tarmac of the Manila International Airport . The rest is history.

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