By Gonzalo Duque

 

THE spectacle of the campaign period vis-à-vis the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte is about to unfold before our eyes.

Whoever sent that guy to bring a case before the Supreme Court for the immediate trial of VP Sara before the Senate did not know the political implications of his action.

It gave Sara the reason to respond to the case, and in responding, she marshaled a battery of lawyers who are well known in legal circles, like Attys. Siegfried Fortun and Chilo Sison.

But the main lawyer for Sara is no other than her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte. With FPPRD in the picture, the case will become a grand show and will help make the PDP senatorial candidates a formidable force to reckon with in the May 12 midterm election.

People will be watching FPPRD defend his daughter before the Supreme Court during the oral argument.

Let’s wait and see whether the Supreme Court and/or the COMELEC will allow TV networks to cover the proceedings.

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The recently concluded Waste Management Summit called by Mayor Belen Fernandez to finally resolve the garbage problem in Dagupan City was a resounding success.

 But what scandalized me the most was the revelation of the Mayor in her briefing. She said during the administration of then Mayor Brian Lim, about P240 million was paid to a contractor for three years for hauling garbage to a place no one knew. And P53 million of this amount was spent during the last 40 days of the Lim administration. 

 If you round it off, this is equivalent to an unbelievable P1.3 million per day. But despite spending this big amount of money, the mountain of garbage in Bonuan remained. What a waste of money!

 Belen also discovered what looked like a leachate pond inside the dump site that was overflowing to the sea. She immediately closed this when she took over again as mayor of Dagupan.

 Relative to this, I heard that Mayor Belen has already ordered the initial planting of trees in the cleared portion of the dumpsite while the remaining mound of garbage is still being hauled to the Urdaneta City sanitary landfill at a rate of 20 truckloads per day.

 With this development, we would be foolish if we do not support the efforts of Mayor Belen to finally do away with the chocolate hill-like dumpsite in Bonuan.

 In the meantime, we have again extended our invitation to Belen to again come to our podcast “The Punching Duo” to give us a briefer on the Waste Management Summit.

 One concern manifested during the summit was the lack of discipline by the public, particularly households, of not segregating their wastes. 

 Marami pa rin ang pasaway na hindi nagse-segregate ng kanilang mga basura! 

 I wonder if the summit also discussed the corresponding disciplinary measures to be applied against violators of waste segregation.

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We have been consistently inviting Mrs. Celia Lim to grace our podcast, but it seems she would not really come as she is always busy attending to her private affairs.

We will just continue to wait for her to respond to our invitation.

In the meantime, anyone from the opposition who wants to come and be our guest is welcome. Please contact our coordinator, Janice Hidalgo, at 0933-896-2191.

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