Brian Lim as vice mayor?
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
FORMER Dagupan Mayor Brian Lim, also a former vice mayor, filed his candidacy for vice mayor and as presiding officer of the Sangguniang Panlungsod in this year’s local elections.
Admittedly, I have no recollection of his performance as vice mayor and SP presiding officer of the city council during the Belen Fernandez administration from 2013-2019. He was non-controversial at the time because Mayor Belen had a full grip of the governance in the city. Her allies in the city council were well-grounded on parliamentary procedures.
But I have noted his performance as mayor from 2019 to 2021. His administration was red-flagged by cases of corruption, from failing to account for the ghost scholars, missing overpriced motorboats, overpriced tablets, illegal collection of fees from vendors, to blocking the waste-to-energy contract that could have helped in removing the dumpsite, etc.
On the other hand, I had the privilege of meeting and studying Vice Mayor Bryan Kua closely during my ‘Punching Duo’ podcast with our columnist Gonz Duque last Saturday. After all the series of unparliamentary rules raised by the 7 epaLiFes in the city council since 2022, I saw in the vice mayor a professional who knew his business in presiding a city council. He was not bullied and was cool under pressure from the 7 epaLiFes’ barkada antics.
Now comes the challenge to Mr. Brian Lim, if elected again as vice mayor after his barkada, the 7 epaLiFes, dutifully created chaos in the city council. It’d be interesting to hear from him how he would have conducted himself if he was the presiding officer with 7 epaLiFes rudely mangling and disrupting the parliamentary processes.
Would he have allowed the councilors:
- To impose Internal Rules that are violative of the Local Government Code?
- To be derisive and scornful in the middle of a regular session?
- To make a mere manifestation take the effect of a formal resolution?
- To end a session without a debate?
- To block annual and supplemental budgets to improve lives in the city?
- To stop the contract with Holycim that would hasten th closure of the Bonuan dumpsite? .
It’d be hypocritical on his part if he answered in the negative in all questions.
Of course, it’s no secret that all that we’ve seen and heard from the 7 epaLiFes had Mr. Lim’s imprimatur. (Councilor Red Erfe-Mejia was always seen constantly looking at this phone and texting whenever he was challenging a ruling by VM BK or arguing with the minority’s Councilor Michael Fernandez ,obviously getting instructions from their boss Mr. Brian how to proceed as barkada).
An uninformed, unstudied presiding officer about parliamentary rules, Mr. Lim can only be expected to act based on political agenda and motives.
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MARCOS AGRI AGENDA. The move of the Abono Partylist and the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (SINAG) asking for the repeal of Executive Order (EO) No. 62, citing its failure to reduce rice price alone as intended is timely.
The ultimate objective that the “economic” advisers of PBBM to have the EO 62 implemented is finally exposed – to benefit their importer-friends in the industry.
And the data from the Philippine Statistics Authority they cited proved the two groups’ contention that showed the prices of rice rose higher instead of lower with the new schedule of tariffs.
The DA’s advisers must be scrambling to the exit doors now that their scheme to benefit importers and hoarders has been exposed and Ombudsman Martires already labeled the agency as the most corrupt department in the Marcos Jr. cabinet.
It now makes people understand why PBBM chose to be the concurrent DA secretary on his first day in office.
All the press releases about lower prices from Kadiwa are in fact a cover-up for the failure of DA to push back the hoarders and importers whom many are already known to cronies of the Malacañang occupants.
Let’s pray that Engr Rosendo So and his SINAG and Abono party-list will not stop here and continue to press for solutions that spell real reforms.
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NO LONGER PRO-MAGA? The Fil-Ams who voted for Trump and his MAGA vision are suddenly quiet.
They are hard put in defending the massive lay-offs that affected many of their family-friends, and the spiraling prices of commodities because of tariffs imposed as sanctions vs. goods imported from China, Mexico and other Euro countries.
Suddenly, they, too, realized that they have to suffer the economic consequences of Trump’s MAGA.
Many Fil-Ams I’m told fear already being accosted on the streets as suspected illegal immigrants. And to avoid further harassment, many started to bring with them IDs and documents that prove their US citizenship. Visiting Pinoys already fear touring major cities where anti-Asian sentiments are high.
The worst is yet to happen for us ordinary Pinoys right in our territory when the US sanctions begin to impact on our goods and services that depend on US government’s funding.
As Manila Time’s Bobi Tiglao reported, the major independent media outlets like the Rappler, PCIJ, CFMR and Vera Files and two others will soon find their bank accounts wiped out because President Trump also stopped the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) from whom they used to receive P20M-P50M yearly to fund their operations. Mr. Tiglao described NED as “one of America’s potent in soft-power agitprop weapons for meddling in countries’ elections so that leaders that refuse to follow Washington’s bidding are deposed.”
Will Mr. Trump ask the Marcos administration to pay for the military equipment sent to our AFP to protect our territorial rights from China?
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CONFLICTING ALIBIS. Our provincial COMELEC officials are literally interpreting the coverage of the rules on campaign, and in doing so they appear ludicrous when their explanations are clearly self-contradictory.
They say they cannot touch the campaign posters of local candidates mounted everywhere because the local campaign has not started and will only start on March 28!
Since the local candidates have been busy with postering campaign materials, aren’t they violating the campaign rule which says it doesn’t begin until March 28? Shouldn’t these candidates be held accountable since they filed their certificate of candidacy, and swore to abide by Comelec rules?
But assuming that our Comelec officials are guided by the campaign schedule, why aren’t they making the candidates for the senate accountable for their illegally mounted posters?
Our provincial, city and town supervisors should recommend the immediate amendment of the campaign rules if they know they cannot enforce the rules. Going by their alibis, they just don’t sound like the competent lawyers they are known to be.
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Our apologies to our readers for our serious but inadvertent mistakes in our editorial last week, stating the wrong dates of landing of allied forces in Leyte and launching of the liberation of Luzon with the landing of General Douglas MacArthur in Dagupan City. The landing in Leyte was on October 20, 1944 while the landing in Dagupan was on January 9, 1945.
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