It’s Nice to Die in this City

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

When I was buying a hand of lakatan bananas in a talipapa (makeshift store), I asked the spouses who manned it if the place I was standing was part of the city of Taguig where the former lady mayor is the wife of my friend then senator and now  House Speaker - wannabe Alan Peter Cayetano.

“Barangay Southside po ito sir. Pinagaagawan ito ng Makati City and Taguig,” the husband, a septuagenarian, told me while he wrapped the almost P100 bananas' hand (P70 a kilo) I bought.

“Nasa Supreme Court na iyang away diyan sa BGC (sprawling world class commercial hub's Bonifacio Global City) at mga barangays. 
Kung kayo ang tatanungin sino mas gusto ninyo?” I asked.

 Both blurted out: Makati!

I told them that in my province Pangasinan many mayors there give P3,000 to P5,000 to the bereaved family of the deceased.

“Magkano ang bigayan sa patay dito sa Makati at Taguig?” I confidently asked them since I knew the nuances of how local chief executives forked out sums to lighten up the grief of their helpless constituents.

The wife said Taguig only gives coffin while Makati City provides the family a coffin, P4,000, canvas, and expenses for coffee, biscuits, and others for the entirety of the wake.

Free coffin, anyone?

If Taguig City has more or less P10 billion annual appropriation budget (2017 AAB was more than P8 billion) this year, Makati City collected P15.8 billion revenues last year that could be part of its reenacted budget, thanks to the procrastination of her opposition dads, this year.

Sus, these mammoth budgets have shamed the P1.10 billion and almost P1 billion AABs of the cities of Dagupan and Urdaneta in my province Pangasinan!

That P15.8 billion of Makati is a lot of monies baby to ingratiate with people like the two talipapa sellers.

The rule of the thumb: If a local government unit collects more, then it has much to offer to its constituents.

More money means more honey.
Asked the Binays of Makati why they kept winning polls as based on the above aphorism.

Except probably to a lady mayor in Pangasinan who just lost the recent election, she did not need a huge annual appropriation budget just like in Makati City and Taguig  to extend help to the needy.

 She depended on the payolas given to her by a syndicate.

The first class town has P250 million AAB this year.

Here was my conversation with her when she was still an incumbent mayor.

ME: Mayora bakit iyong peryahan na may drop ball at pula puti (betting games) na pati mga bata ay nagsusugal ay nasa gitna lang ng simbahan at munisipyo?

MAYORA: Pabayaan mo na sila. Iyong payola diyan ay binibigay ko sa mga namamatayan at mga mahihirap na pumupunta dito lalo na wala ng jueteng na nakakatulong.

Payola from operator of the peryahan to the mayors vary from three hundred thousand pesos to four million of pesos to each of them.

The illegal gambling games offered by the faire were part of the paid legal amusement there.

The games patronized by the great unwashed were version of the rich men’s casinos in Clark in Pampanga and Heritage Hotel in Pasay City.

“I used that P350,000 to pay for the orchestra and other expenses for our fiesta,” another mayor in Pangasinan told some media men he considered his closed pals.

“So how much you will give to a poor man whose loved ones die,” I posed to the hizzoner.

“It depends, if he is my supporter I give P3,000 to P5,000. If he was an avid supporter of my rival, I chide him first and then give him a pittance”.

Por Dios Por Santo, if the payolas from the syndicates vary in my province, the patronage for the bereaved in Makati and Taguig differ too!

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(You can read my selected intriguing but thought-provoking columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)