By Leonardo Micua

 

WHAT got my goat about the the seven majority councilors of Dagupan’s Sangguniang Panlungsod was Councilor Alvin Coquia’s alibi for their absence last March 12 session – that all of them were forced to skip the session because one of them had an asthma attack and had to be rushed to Villaflor Doctors Memorial Hospital.

Who will believe him? He should tell that to the Marines.

Coquia said his fellow councilor, Librada Reyna-Macalanda, the majority floor leader, suffered an asthma attack and had to be brought to VDMH for treatment as if that was credible enough to justify their inexcusable absence, their boycott.

Granting that Reyna-Macalanda was indeed attacked by a recurring asthma, that could not be an excuse for her six colleagues to skip the session and abandon their sworn duty to the 170,000 plus people of Dagupan City to pass the annual budget that was already several months late.

It was too obvious they deliberately did not appear on the day they were expected to submit their final committee report on the annual budget to the plenary for final discussion by all members of the SP, so no action could be taken.

Vice Mayor Bryan Kua had to adjourn the session after three roll calls and no one from the majority bloc showed up.

In exasperation, Vice Mayor and presiding officer Kua ordered City Secretary Ryan Ravanzo to mark all the seven majority councilors absent because he did not sign any application for privilege leaves and ordinary leaves of the seven councilors.

Many, on hearing the news about the boycott, could not help but suspect that the majority bloc concocted another sinister political plot to slow down the momentum of the Belen Fernandez administration by stalling the approval of the annual budget again.

Recall that they passed a scandalously reduced annual budget of P864.9 million as 2023 budget, which was only good for a third class town, and the Department of Budget and Management regional office declared it as  “inoperative in its entirety”.

When the original annual budget had to be resubmitted after another meeting by the Local Development Council at Lenox Hotel attended by Councilor Redford Erfe-Mejia who assured his committee will endorse the resubmitted annual budget, it was not passed after Mayor Belen spurned their call for a talk with her.

Were it not for God’s intervention, the 2023 annual budget would not have been passed. But the majority still tried to invalidate it by refusing to approve the minutes of past session that approved the budget. Then they went to court for their petition to nullify the approval.

Fortunately, the court denied the prayer of the majority councilors to stop the implementation of the 2023 annual budget even knowing all the funds appropriated therein had already been spent for their purpose.

Then, after their boycott, the majority councilors finally allowed the much-delayed annual budget to pass.

Our theory is, they knew that if they continued procrastinating on the passage of the annual budget, they cannot pass the Special Recognition Incentive and Gratuity Pay of regular as well as job order employees, respectively.

That will mean losing the precious votes of 7,000 plus regular employees and 7,800 JOEs and their families in the next election, which is only about 13 months away.

Note that the financial bonanza of these employees should have been given way back last December so that they can enjoy happier Christmas with their families, but they were not allowed to. How can they forget that the opposition councilors refused to grant them the benefits due them all because they wanted to exact revenge on Mayor Belen.

I surmise the reason they did not legislate a smaller annual budget like they did last year, was because the administration of Mayor Belen not only answered all their questions but submitted all the documents required by Erfe-Mejia’s committee. That left them no more reason not to pass the annual budget.

Did the majority bargain for the withdraw all of the criminal cases filed against three of them? It appears that there was nothing of that sort.

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