By Ermin Garcia Jr.

 

DAGUPENOS can stop wondering if Dagupan Mayor Belen Fernandez is, indeed, acting on the series of anomalies and irregularities her administration discovered along the way.

Our headline this week is about how her earlier threats to act on the seeming bias and cover-up of the irregularities committed by the office of then City Mayor Brian Lim are proceeding. She deliberately called out the city auditor for failing to report on the blatant corruption in four instances as evidenced by documents that could not possibly escape his attention as a trained auditor.

The way I see it, City Auditor Michael Basa should count his blessings that Mayor Belen did not particularly ask his superiors to investigate him, but simply to verify and validate her office’s findings that he omitted in his annual audit report.

In fact, by asking Mr. Basa to review and investigate his own omissions is actually giving him a chance to come clean and save whatever is left of his professional integrity. But will he?

In this situation, half-truths can only be deemed as lies and a clear attempt at cover-up. After all, numbers, dates and documents don’t lie and there were people who prepared and signed the documents who must be made to account.

By eventually admitting to his glaring omissions, he implicates himself but makes himself the most credible witness to point to accountable persons behind the crimes committed against the city government.

Will he go down as a misguided public servant who redeemed himself in the end or the foolish man caught in the web of corruption who wouldn’t snitch on his generous patrons?  That choice is his alone.

Mr. Basa must account for himself first. In doing so, current city officials will have much to learn from him.

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MAYOR BELEN AND THE ILLEGAL FISH PENS. And how is Mayor Belen doing in dealing with the more than 1,000 illegal fish pens still operating in the city, continue polluting the city’s rivers despite her earlier gung-ho pronouncements?

One can see her determination to resolve the issue when she finally named the owners of the cluster of oversized fish pens found in the city’s rivers. However, I don’t see her succeeding in her resolve in the next two years that is, if she doesn’t stop listening to her misguided advisers who obviously have their own hidden personal interests in the operations of the illegal fish pens.

Why, for instance, advise Mayor Belen not to press charges against the owners of illegal fish pens who knew they were violating the city ordinance? The only possible motive I can see is to protect the profits of their unidentified friends and distant or close relatives It’s obvious who stands to benefit from this policy, and it’s not Mayor Belen!

Warning Mayor Belen of impending court cases if she files cases against violators, in fact, insults her intelligence but her advisers seem to be confident that they would be listened to because they are “loyal” to her. 

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SCARE TACTICS. What they don’t tell her and pray she will never realize, is that they’ve been pulling her leg, that her policy of “no-filing of charges”, “allow violators to recover their investments by keeping their illegal operations until they can harvest,” only served to embolden others to abuse her benevolent policy. As reports from the TF Bantay Ilog indicated, not only did political allies of ex-Mayor Brian Lim run around her but became more audacious in re-stocking their pens in her face. One even was bold enough to construct a new fish pen while the TF Bantay Ilog was busy dismantling others. How’s that for successful bulong-bulong by “loyal” advisers?

They made her believe that reiterating her policy of applying “due process” on every turn makes her appear as a “fair leader”. But what her “due process” policy does is really to assure her advisers’ friends and relatives that operate illegal fish pens not to worry about losing their investments overnight. “Due process” means delaying tactics.

In brief, her “loyal” advisers certainly succeeded in making her look like a gullible fool, someone to be ignored, someone afraid to back her words with firm actions, someone not be feared!

See the results – there is no way she can stop the more than 1,000 illegal fish pens from operating in the city with an average of maximum 15 illegal structures dismantled over a 14-day period after a 10-day grace period!

The “loyal” advisers must be laughing all the way to their banks every week!

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DOING THE RIGHT THING. If there’s one thing I’d like to see, it is for Dagupeños to respect and fear her as a law-abiding leader, a strong and consistent advocate of good governance who is unrelenting in her campaign against graft and corruption.  It’s completely the opposite of what her “loyal” advisers want to see.  

They obviously wouldn’t think of advising her to file cases initially against all owners of oversized pens and instead just to keep on scaring her with “dire consequences”. What they won’t tell her is the fact that affluent owners are scared to be dragged to a court over their violations because of their insatiable greed. They won’t tell her that the filing of cases will pressure all other illegal operators to close shop before the uncompromising Mayor Belen sets her eyes on them. They won’t tell her that more than a hundred owners a week will voluntarily dismantle their structures in no time.

So, with loyal advisers like them,  perish the thought of seeing  her announce that, henceforth, more cases will be filed according to the sizes of the pens. Such an announcement  would send their friends and relatives operating smaller but profitable sizes in panic. Not good for their relationships.

In fact, her advisers will not dare tell her to start demanding payments from owners for costs of dismantling the illegal structures by TF Bantay Ilog after abandoning their pens intact. That could affect their weekly secret “retainers”.

Having said all that about her loyal advisers, I won’t be surprised if her loyal advisers will be quick to bash me on radio and in social media but they still won’t dare suggest the measures that Mayor Belen should be doing as the no-nonsense chief executive because that would hurt their personal agenda.

I even wonder. Was it possible that then Mayor Brian Lim was so confident in encouraging his political allies and contributors to flout the city ordinance because he knew that not even Mayor Belen will not dare touch the fish pen owners? How much did he know of her “loyal” advisers?

Again, I look forward to be told wrong in my face and see her advisers finally doing the right thing for the city and for Dagupeños!

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WHERE IS THE GOVERNOR? Has anyone heard him speak his mind about a drug war in Pangasinan? Or give a long overdue update about how much he has done about his campaign promises? About how many potential investors he has talked to who can create the hundreds of jobs and economic opportunities for Pangasinenses?

Did he ever have a discussion with leaders of the local transport about what options he can offer to help those will be greatly affected by the submitted Local Public Transport Route plan? I guess, if the provincial board itself has not found any reason to discuss or debate his economic vision, he probably thinks his constituents who voted for him should not expect more!

Is it possible that he believes calling for a press conference like the president does, like all governors do, would not be worth his time because he believes the local media doesn’t have the reach and influence to make or unmake him? Hmmm. Probably.

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