Mayor Belen vs. epaLifes
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
I view the First 100 Days Report of Dagupan Mayor Belen Fernandez as ex-Mayor Brian Lim’s own comeuppance, for sabotaging accomplishments of her six years administration, believing he and his ilk could get away with it. Well, she didn’t let him (and them) get away with it!
But actually, the city’s electorate already did its own before she could by thrashing him at the voting precincts last May with more than 14,000 votes!
Let this be a warning to Mr. Lim’s allies in the city council. Until they take their numbers in the legislature as an opportunity to restore their individual integrity before the electorate instead of believing that they can make Mayor Belen get her own comeuppance, they’re burying their political graves deeper. Lest they forget, they won only because the INC made the mistake of endorsing them as a concession for their boss’ inevitable defeat at the polls.
If they don’t make good on their promise to the INC that they will support good governance, they might just as well kiss their political career in 2025 goodbye. They lied to the INC. The epaLiFes’ conduct the past week was a slap to the faces of the INC leaders who had prayed that the epaLiFes’ support would lead to greater and more benefits to their kapatid.
By deliberately delaying the delivery of vital and basic services for all Dagupeños by withholding approval of funds, using committee hearings on a proposed ordinance declared as urgent by the executive is not only contemptible but reprehensible by any measure. That trapoism and be can be easily exposed in this age of technology, is something the evidently immature epaLiFes cannot comprehend.
This is truly sad since some of them have the heart but the barkada-trapoism is having a stronger hold on them. Sayang kayo!
Today, all they’ve done is to make sure that epaLiFes and Brian politics are bad news!
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BOLD AND FURIOUS. Then, let’s look at Mayor Belen Fernandez’s stance.
What she’s been doing is not lost to all (except to her diehard detractors allied with the epaLiFes). She’s trying to make up for the lost time for Dagupeños that were deprived of services they deserved.
However, she’s confusing her stance against graft and corruption with just exposing the anomalies she’s discovering along the way. She’s wrong to think that she’s doing her part by merely exposing the misdeeds of the accountable officials, and ends there!
By stopping there, she’s sending the message to today’s corrupt officials and businessmen they can continue to plot stealing more public funds because she fears stepping on their toes, that she’s really completely intimidated by them, afraid to make them accountable today and tomorrow for fear of a political retaliation!
Until we hear and see her city administration start filing cases against the past accountable officers for their misdeeds and criminal activities that she exposed, she can’t fully claim to be the guardian of good governance in the city.
As she reported, there were people in official capacities that allowed the city fishery ordinance to be trashed by the Lim administration, allowing businessmen and public officials to violate the ordinance. In fact, allowing them to go scot-free, even allowing them to finish their harvest is sending the message that her administration is condoning their crimes. Not good.
There were designated persons that made the city scholarship fund a source for corruption before the very eyes of the city’s youth. There were city officials who pocketed millions of the national ayuda entrusted to them by the national government at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Well, it’s time for Mayor Belen to name them and charge them! If she won’t do it for fear of political reprisal, then she must not expect your constituents to believe her next time. Fact is, she never filed any case vs erring corrupt city officials she reported in the past. And failing to do this again, her wishy-washy stance on corruption can easily be interpreted as protecting her own friends and business allies involved in the criminal escapades in the city government.
It is this light that I hope both, Mayor Belen and the epaLiFes, see where their opportunities to become the exalted political leaders in their time, lie.
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GOVERNOR’S MINDSET. It appears that Guv Mon-Mon Guico is stuck with his mindset that being the congressman of a small district, a mayor of a small town is no different from running the provincial government: that the less his constituents know, the better for his political run.
It’s been more than 115 days, and the governor has not called for a press conference to share his views about what he has done so far and what he considers a priority in the months ahead,
Nothing’s been heard about his concerns over the collapse of the Romulo Bridge in Bayambang. Did anyone hear him order the provincial engineering office and the DPWH districts to make a comprehensive report on the status of bridges across the province?
He was, and stil is, extremely quiet about the PDEA P2.5B drug bust in Pozorrubio. It was only one month in his administration when it happened. He was expected to be furious and indignant that it happened right under his very nose, being the previous Congressman of the Fifth District to which Pozorrubio town belongs. But he keeps his mouth zipped. Why?
It is exasperating that Pangasinan has yet to hear what he expects from the Pangasinan PNP in the campaign for law and order, particularly in the calibrated drug war, loose firearms, illegal gambling. Or, what does he want done to address and counter growing cases of dengue, malaria, cholera, measles, foot-and-mouth, polio, etc.
What is he planning to avoid possible shortage of salt, sugar and rice? Will he introduce crop insurance to local farmers? Does he have anything in mind for sports development for the youth? For the informal education of the out-of-school youth? What are his thoughts about daily challenges of elders and the physically handicapped? Does he have new plans for the conduct of job fairs?
His other constituents in the province, never mind Binalonan and 5th District, have endless questions that cannot be addressed by photo-ops alone in his and his wife’s Facebook accounts!
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MERE ORDER-TAKER? Then there is the Provincial Board under the leadership of Vice Guv Mark Lambino.
There is no question that the Sangguniang Panlawigan is doing its job weekly, monitoring legislative work in the Six Districts. But why doesn’t it pass a resolution asking the governor what he’s plans are for peace and order, food security, health protection program for elders and the youth, , infrastructure, etc.?
It supported the Guico administration by passing ordinances that made for Guv Mon-Mon’s First 100 Days Report. That’s it?
Curiously, it has not passed anything to date to help support win the drug war in the province after the scandalous P2.5-B drug bust in Pozorrubio. It didn’t even call a committee hearing to look into how the drug syndicate was able to operate in 5th District. (Why didn’t the board members recently elected to represent the Fifth District called the town mayor and police during its “Question Hour” to account for the billions-worth of drug operations for months (and years?) in the town?
Is this about kanya-kanyang protection ng racket na lang sa Pangasinan? Your constituents are asking.
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