Why the Espinos could not pole vault Bautista town?

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

During luncheons hosted by top officials, it disgusted me to see some members of the media surreptitiously whisked some plastic bags from their pockets and shamelessly put some foods ordered by the host into them whenever there is a press conference held in some fancy restaurants.

Gubernatorial bet Amado Espino, III , the son of the
governor, ran 4th class town Bautista for nine years.
His uncle Deo Espino is the incumbent mayor
 of the poor town. 

Although these malpractices are assailable, I still hold my horses not to chide them since they seem to have propriety not to pocket the table utensils of the restaurant.

Son of a gun, that would be theft and entails a jail sentence of probably more than four years ha ha ha.
I was just happy to see drank media colleagues in a fisticuff because they quarrel about somebody hiding the head of a "lechon" pig head in a knapsack.

***

With every Christmas parties being celebrated every day and night by national and local government offices particularly these days, I was at a party of a city police station where foods, booze, band music, and gifts overflowed.

“We slaughtered a cow and roasted pigs for this occasion,” the deputy of police told me and some media men.

“Despite the sea of police men and their frolicking families, the revelry is orderly,” I told him.

He said he got a lesson last Christmas that embarrassed him so much.

“When I entered the (police) station I saw a big lechon carried by those who roasted it at the main door. I saw them put the roasted pig at the table inside. When I went at the back to entertain the mayor, I asked a cop to bring the lechon at our table so the mayor could pick the crackling and delectable pig skin. I was “horrified” seeing the pig staring at us probably feeling sorry as it was almost bare except of its skeleton,” he narrated.

I asked him why the swine’s meat had been ransacked. He said police men, when they saw the inviting roasted animal hustled and jostled with each other by pulling or slicing the meat and fill it in their plastic bags so they stock them for their next meal at home.

Pangasinan Governor Amado T. Espino, Jr.
incumbent governor of the 44 towns and 3
cities' province for almost nine years

“Nag balkot (Pangasinan derisive term for wrapping)!” he sadly concluded.

***

Media men working with Pangasinan Governor Amado T. Espino, Jr have been using as “Exhibit” the 3rd Class Sison town located at the outermost part of Pangasinan.

“Mark and Kimi Cojuangco have been a resident of this town and they have been a congressman for a while but look at Sison, it is not thriving,” these media men have been bitching and bellyaching Ad Nauseam on radio and newspapers.

For me, even Sison is run by Superman or business magnate Donald Trump, it could not be burgeoned like first class towns Calasiao, Mangaldan, and Sta. Barbara.

Why? Sison’s economies - of- scale are not at par with these municipalities.

Why Ginebra San Miguel and RC Cola put plants in Barangays Tebag and Marunong in Sta. Barbara and pay the public coffer with P21 million, P8 million business and real property taxes, respectively?

ANSWER: Sta. Barbara has been strategically located at the center of Pangasinan where they can efficiently distribute their goods to their customers in and outside of the province.

When RC Cola had not yet built its edifices there, it paid already its yearly P600, 000 real property tax (RPT) to the town coffer because of the swanky land it brought, Mayor Carlito Zaplan told me in 2012.

Another case: Why Robinsons Mall, Honda and Toyota Display Centers -, and other Top 100 Corporations in the Philippines opened store in Calasiao and not in Sison? ANSWER: Calasiao was strategically located in the centre of the mammoth province. Same with Mangaldan, Barangay Carmen in Rosales town where it hosts giant retail store SM, and other cities in Pangasinan where businessmen gravitate because of the profit that await them.

If pro Espino media lap dogs non-intelligently gobbled Sison as a pariah, just like the way they idiotically pounce on Mark Cojuangco, a resident of Sison since 1967 as a non-Pangasinense, they should look at Bautista town where Espino’s son and namesake, who runs against Cojuangco for the 2016 gubernatorial race, was mayor for nine years. Yes Virginia, nine years and daddy was the governor and almost nothin’ significant happen to Bautista unlike the transformation of Calasiao under the six years of the tutelage of Mayor Mark Roy Macanlalay.

Bautista was still pathetically 4th Class town (2010 Census, Wikipidea) if based on the rankings of the Departments of Finance and the Interior & Local Government.

Why Espino Jr., could not pole vault Bautista to first class? ANSWER: Just like Sison its location is not conducive to investors.

The saving grace of Sison however compared to Espinos’ Bautista where the incumbent mayor there is the brother of the governor, Sison has No.1 corporate taxpayer’s Northern Cement Corporation owned by the Cojuangcos that give multi-millions of pesos of business and real property taxes to the treasury because of thousands of cement bags it churn-out.

The Espinos apologists argued with the nine years reign of Cojuangco as congressman and the six years rule of his wife Kimi as solon of the 5th District, why they could not make an aesthetic or economic turn-around of the town despite the pork barrels in their disposal?

ANSWER: The Cojuangcos judiciously and equally distributed to the eight towns and one city’s district the hundreds of millions of pesos of pork barrel the national government gave them.

Have you seen the expanded national highway in Urdaneta City that solved the dreaded monstrous traffic congestion there decade ago where motorists bound from the north and vice versa were struck in a hell hole of traffic in the heart of the city? Thanks to Mark Cojuangco’s aggressive intercessions with the power-that-be in Imperial Manila to give him funds to solve the congestion.

And I am not yet talking here of the multi million pesos rice and corn drying facilities in Alcala and Villasis towns that farmers have been enjoying especially during rainy seasons.

And I am not yet talking about the multi-million pesos and other projects that need another column to fill them all up.

To digress from my Sison and Bautista’s brouhahas, have you heard Philippine de facto envoy to Taiwan Amadito Perez, Jr denounced recently  Governor Espino that during his almost nine years stint as chief executive of the province, even a slab or a meter of cement as project in the 5th District, the governor failed to implement there?

 (You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)