Another “magic” budgeting
By Ermin F. Garcia Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

Last week, Dagupan City Councilor Michael Fernandez sounded the alarm bells about an impending deficit spending in the city. He nipped the bud but frankly the expose was hardly news. In fact, judging from the ready response of Mayor Benjie Lim’s own choir, Fernandez’s expose is nothing now but an old “hogwash.”
    

Yes, the whole scenario is familiar. It was not a deficit, they said. It was merely an interim problem in collection.
    

We had seen this before and the issue ended with the city hall getting away with it.

***
    

To the credit of the mayor’s choir at the city hall, they learned their lessons well from last year’s skirmishes with the vice mayor and the PUNCH on the issue.
    

Their rebuttal today are unshakeable, their definition of terms now impeccable, and their announced strategy speaks of “learned wisdom.” 
    

 Pakapalan lay lupan talaga.
***
 
 

 Last year, city hall suspended payments of its IOUs  for the last quarter. Among them were the bills of the Dagupan Electric Corp. and PLDT. To my recollection, one of those who fell victim to the “no-deficit-strategy” was our departed friend Nap Donato. His fee for conducting seminars for city hall employees in 2004 was not paid till the first quarter of this year under the 2005 budget!
   

Initially, city hall fumbled explaining it’s less than transparent ploy to escape condemnation for an impending deficit. How do you explain the scheme of withholding payment to give the impression that the city coffers are awash with cash and therefore, end the year with a surplus?
   

And they are doing it again this year but this time with a lot more finesse. Millions of scheduled expenses this year will again be postponed for the first quarter of 2006 to be paid by 2006 budget. The expected result will be another surplus in 2005! What magic!
   

With this strategy, the city will always end up with a surplus at each of the year until the lying and cheating catch up with them again!
          

Haay, sinong niloloko nyo?
***
NAP D. AND MAX M.  Permit me to remember two revered colleagues, Nap Donato at 55, and Max Mendiguarin at 80, who both succumbed to massive cardiac arrest last week, a day apart from each other.      

I met Nap as the go-go-go student leader of Dagupan Colleges who enthusiastically linked up with me when I started my own crusade against jueteng in 1970. I had been so impressed with his dedication and commitment that I knew then I would have no problem associating with him in his professional years.

The following year, he surprised me when he readily accepted my invitation for him to join me as my first and only account manager for AMA- Northern Management Services, the first advertising and public relations agency in Pangasinan. It was his first job.  His pioneering spirit helped us establish ourselves in those times when advertising in newspapers was limited to greetings and congratulations, hardly considered a marketing tool.  With a team, we went on to manage the Dagupan City Fiesta. My only regret then was I never had the chance to meet all the girls he dated those days… we were both bachelors.
***
  
 
Little did I know that his stint with our small agency started his professional career in marketing and public relations. This later led him to earn a degree at the Asian Institute of Management. That accomplishment made me even prouder of him, and was happiest for him when he told me that he would not settle for a corporate post in Manila but would stay in what he already referred to then as My City, to be an entrepreneur.
   

And an entrepreneur he became. Imaginative, purposeful, aggressive and determined. He was a marketing professional who focused on positive things about his clients, and his relations with the media. I had long wanted him to rejoin me in the Punch as our marketing consultant but he had bigger plans then.
   

I was then elated when he finally came around two years ago to tell me that he would join the PUNCH family for good. Since then, he stayed on and that started another active collaboration between us – his marketing and my journalism.
***
   
But clearly from his writings in HOTSHOTS, it was evident that his dreams for his “MY CITY” was never lost since we crossed paths.
   

The week before he died, he excitedly described the preparations he had done for the homecoming of the UPANG alumni…particularly the media support for the event. He asked me to continue providing space for the homecoming’s update to ensure the event’s success, and I told him I would. It was clearly his passion for the day, and one simply cannot avoid being affected by his usual enthusiasm.
   

Yes, the PUNCH will continue to support the homecoming in his honor.
   

Nap may not have distinguished himself as a journalist, but I know he made a difference for HIS CITY. And I know he did it in his own Napoleon way, like no other.   
***
   

When I invited Kuya Max to join the Punch family in 1986, I knew then I was inviting a man whose life was committed to serving a people with the vital news information they need.
   

He struck me as one who wanted nothing else but the respect of his peers, his loyal friends and thousands of regular listeners. He was a simple man, with simple needs and but he certainly knew his import wherever his journalism practice brought him. 
   

The few times the Sunday Punch inadvertently failed to carry his “Crime Notes” column item owing to pressing deadlines, Kuya Max was almost always in the office the following day to gently remind us that his legion of followers were again disappointed. While he jokingly “reprimanded” me after each faux pas, I had taken his line to me “the Sunday Punch can never be complete with Tartariwan Max”, seriously. I always knew Kuya Max was holding his own, contributing to what made the Punch the paper that we were proud of. After all, Max Mendiguarin with his “tartariwa” brand of journalism, became a habit so difficult to break for thousands of Pangasinenses.   
***
  
 Until last week, I would receive email messages from overseas Pangasinenses who said they could not forget that they lived a life listening to Max Mendiguarin every morning. Everyone who wrote expressed elation to know that he continued to be “heard” through the Sunday Punch. They all missed him.
  

 Kuya Max, the little big man of public affairs journalism in the province, was one practitioner who never felt his old age or technology got in the way of his practice. He was not one to be intimidated by younger brash reporters for he knew he was equipped with something that only integrity, courage and pride for the practice can provide.
   

The Sunday Punch lost another good journalist while Pangasinan media lost another great voice but we both but gained another legend in our ranks.  Let the word “Tartariwa” remind us all practitioners to be like him…selfless, humble and professional. 
 

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