Would Dads oppose Mayor Bona’s worthy projects in Mangaldan?

Mangaldan Mayor Bonafe de Vera-Parayno (4th from left)
strike a pose with Rep. Gina de Venecia (4th District, Pangasinan)
 (5th from left) and some members of the Sangguniang Bayan
(town dads) during the turn over of the meat processing
equipment given by the Department of Trade & Industry to
the burgeoning town.

By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

Speed browsing the Obama’s War by Bob Woodward at my computer, I stumbled on the” moral ascendancy” of a political columnist when she “chided” a four-star general who is an alumnus of West Point and Harvard University.
Here are the excerpts of the book: “As General David Petraeus and Richard Holbrooke (President Barrack Obama’s special envoy to Iraq and Afghanistan) huddled intently, reviewing each line of Obama’s speech. Holbrooke had what he said were important edits about the Afghan police. As the restaurant cleared out, Petraeus suddenly jumped to his feet to greet the elderly woman passing by their table. “Helen Thomas (who just died this year- MCO),” he said, in a courtly display of military manners and charm. “It’s David Petraeus. It’s so good to see you.” There was the 88-year-old columnist for Hearst newspapers, the scourge of ten presidents and their press secretaries. “What the hell are you doing in Afghanistan?” she asked. Not even a hello. Why escalate the war? she prodded. “This is Vietnam all over again.” No, Petraeus said, trying to respond. But Thomas barged into his answers with more questions, some of which she recalled later in an interview. “Come on, don’t give me that stuff.” “What’s your exit strategy?” “How are you going to solve this?” “What are you talking about?” “And anyway, what are you screwing around in Iraq for? You know it’s going to hell when we leave.” “What are we going to do? Are we going after al Qaeda?” 

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 Here’s what I found I reading on speeches of then President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton to get an idea for a piece I am going to write for a Philippines mayor’s first 100 days in office.
 Has the speech writers at the White House forgot to insert the most appropriate word here?
"America demands and deserves big things from us,- and nothing big ever came from being small. Let us remember the timeless wisdom of Cardinal Bernardin, when facing the end of his own life. He said, "It is wrong to waste the precious gift of time, on acrimony and division (it should be "dichotomy" in lieu of "division "para rhyme sa "acrimony"- MCO)
 ***
While Janet Napoles caper’s on the hated pork barrel could probably put the coup d’ grace (death blow) to the “pork ” where lawmakers illegally pocket a significant portion of public funds that should go to the community as projects, Mangaldan Mayor Bona Fe de Vera-Parayno has literally put the death blow to the P3.2 million pork barrel a year given to the town’s vice mayor and the members of the Sangguniang Bayan (town council) that has become a customary practice of the “honorable” at the August Chamber since the time of former Mayor Benigno Gubatan in the 1990s.
 Would the smarting members of the town council still be magnanimous in the name of public interest and general welfare in approving the mayor mass based projects for fiscal year 2014 before the October 16 deadline this year as mandated by the local government code?
Some of these projects are practical, pioneering, revolutionary, and income generating that could be a model to towns and cities not only in Pangasinan but in the country.
  But these projects need corresponding appropriation from the town council that would approve the following: 1) Conversation of the Idle Third Floor of the municipal building to a Multi- Function Hall; 2) Swimming Pool; 3) Urgent Care Clinic.

Multi-Function Hall
The mayor explained that the multi-function hall would not only become income generating to the town from the revenues it gets from the private sector who availed it but would be an escape venue for Mangaldinians who find shelter whenever calamity like the monstrous flood strike again the town.
The renovation would erase the public perception of the place as idle, unkempt, and dark that is ridiculously referred by passers as hunted house.
 “It could be an evacuation center. We are going to construct an elevator there that would complement the place to ferry not only the patrons of the multi-purpose hall but those dislocated residents, the handicapped, and the old folks who would be having a hard time ascending to the third floor,” she stressed.
 De Vera-Parayno said that elevator nowadays, just like car, is not a luxury but a necessity in fixing the problem quickly.
Her justification for the construction of the elevator was a refutation to critics who mocked it in the media. She has something to say to those cynics who take potshots of the elevator and the swimming pool.
 “Not so fast, we have to present and debate first the merits of my projects in the SB (Sangunian Bayan),” de Vera-Parayno told this paper after asking her about the skeptical stance of Vice Mayor Manuel Casupang of her projects in a radio interview.
 Casupang said that Mayor Parayno could not just unilaterally implement projects without the approval of the council.
A municipal official, who asked anonymity, said the pronouncement of the vice mayor in the radio was sweeping. “Hindi niya pueding sabihin iyon. That’s why we are preoccupied nowadays at the mayor’s office detailing the nuts and bolts of the projects before we submit them for debate at the SB”.

Swimming Pool
The mayor, who was brought up in the United States, said the swimming pool would be constructed at the Mangaldan National High School for the free use of the students there. “It would be a training ground for disaster preparedness for the flood prone town where water rises as high as the rooftop of the houses “.
 She said the pool can bolster the swimming acumen of the students and folks in her town. “It would be another source of income for individuals who will avail it for their private functions through a minimum fee”.

 Urgent Care Clinic
 The mayor, who was into the health care business in the U.S, explained that her administration would renovate the old infirmary building so it can serve as first aid clinic, and mitigate morbidity of the people in the town who suffered physical ailment and accident.
 “It takes 45 minutes inclusive of traffic to bring to Dagupan (City) a patient to a hospital there who was either struck by cardiac arrest or stroke”.
 She said if there is an urgent care clinic untimely death of people in Mangaldan could be avoided.
 She cited the case of former Mayor Herminio Romero who died in a heart attack as he was being brought to a hospital in Dagupan City. The mayor stressed the clinic would also be an income-generating project to the municipal coffer through its socialized payment system based on the financial capacity of the people who patronize it.
 She said it is generally for free for the poor people of the town. “It is like Region 1 Medical Center where its more than P1 million a day revenue from patients who are capable to pay for its quality service that is much better than its private counterparts in Dagupan City is used to subsidize the free medication of the indigents. What mayor Bona has been doing is a master stroke that only the skeptics and anti-progress in Mangaldan would frantically oppose,” a source told this paper.
 Political spectators in Mangaldan cross their fingers with bated breath as they wait how the members of the council under the leadership of Vice Mayor Casupang treat the commonsensical, pionerring, revolutionary, and income generating projects the Parayno Administration will submit to them anytime next month.

SB Member threaten to block proposed budget? 
 “We hope the magnanimity of the vice mayor and the members of the SB should allow reasons to prevail as these projects are deliberated and debated on the hollowed hall of the council,” the source fervently hope. The apprehension of the executive department, the source said, is when the vice mayor and some members of the SB would throw their weights in opposing the projects after Parayno took away their P3.2 million pork barrel.
 The source said one of them even has the gall, in September 2 meeting at the mayor’s office, in warning that they would block her projects.
“The pork made the recipients identify their pet projects for their favorite private contractors to construct. But the mayor opposed this. She said that it is high time for the town to walk the straight path (Daang Matawid” the campaign slogan of the Liberal Party where she and President Benigno Aquino III belong) where the SB should make laws and not implement projects. It is the executive department that should implement the projects and not the legislature, “the source opined.
 My poser: Would the honorable SB members allowed their post to be bastardized in opposing worthwhile projects that could bring the town to places because of the seemingly immoral pork barrel taken away from them? Hindi naman siguro ganoon kababa ang talino ng mga councilors diyan sa Mangaldan.
(Send comments to totomortz@yahoo.com)