Another grenade attack at Pangasinan's mayor house

Mayor Perez and Gov. Espino (Extreme Left and 2nd from Left
respectively)

By Pangasinan Muna

 The Liberal Party in Pangasinan today expressed outrage over the latest grenade attack on the house of Urdaneta Mayor Amadeo Gregorio “Bobom” Perez IV, two days after he hosted President Aquino’s luncheon-meeting with incumbent mayors at his residence.
 The Liberal Party noted that the grenade attack on Mayor Perez’s residence took place only a week after unidentified men also lobbed a grenade at the house of Bugallon Mayor Rodrigo Orduna, the whistleblower who filed plunder charges against Gov. Amado Espino, Jr. for alleged involvement in jueteng operations.
 “We, in the Liberal Party, join our fellow Pangasinenses in expressing our anger over this latest outbreak of violence that target incumbent mayors of the province,” the LP said in a statement.
 “What makes the incident more reprehensible is the fact that the latest grenade attack took place in the same area where Mayor Perez hosted a luncheon-meeting for the President last Thursday,” the LP pointed out. “We have no idea what the motives of the perpetrators are, but we hope that this is not connected with the President’s call for the LP and NPC mayors to join him in his crusade for good government in Pangasinan,” the LP added.
 The President toured Lingayen and Urdaneta City last Thursday to inaugurate government projects and help campaign for Team Pnoy candidates in the province led by LP’s gubernatorial candidate Hernani A. Braganza.
 Last April 24, an unidentified person also lobbed a grenade on Mayor Orduna’s compound on Bugayong street in Barangay Poblacion, Bugallon. No one was reported injured in the incident.
 Orduna is serving his last term as mayor, and is now running for vice mayor of Bugallon. He has joined the Liberal Party after severing his ties with Gov. Espino, whose son Jumel is now running for mayor of Bugallon under the Nationalist People’s Coalition.
 Orduna hogged the headlines of dailies last December after he filed plunder charges at the Office of the Ombudsman against Gov. Espino for allegedly pocketing more than P900 million from proceeds of jueteng operations in Pangasinan. Orduna, a former fiduciary of Espino, said the governor accumulated the ill-gotten wealth from jueteng operations since the time Espino was police director of Pangasinan in 1988.
 His statements at the Ombudsman were corroborated by Fernando Alimagno, alias Boy Bata, who confessed that he was one of the biggest jueteng operators in Pangasinan. Alimagno is now running for mayor of Candelaria, Quezon, under the PDP-Laban.