Mayor’s “Pasabog” Went Pfft

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

 Whoever advised Dagupan City Mayor Belen T. Fernandez to crow at Facebook about an impending “pasabog (explosive news) she would expose the following morning (January 17, 2023) should be crucified upside down.

The Mayor is now a laughing stock by people inside and outside of the coastal city marred by infighting among its recalcitrant majority opposition and acrimonious minority councilors.

FALSE NEWS. Dagupan City Mayor Belen Fernandez (extreme left of the left photo) in a huddle with opposition Councilors Alvin Coquia and Malou Fernandez after the Local Development Council’s meeting, Other photos from top and clockwise show opposition Majority Leader Red Mejia and Coun. Alfie Fernandez in a bar/restaurant with Coun. Dada Reyna, Coquia, and Fernandez a few days after the vaunted LDC meeting. Mayor Fernandez posted on Facebook that the meeting of the LDC where the two opposition solons would join the following morning was her pasabog or big news. Many people believe that the heydays of the opposition have been over after the duo capitulated to the mayor but those photos above rebutted her declaration.

The “pasabog” of the “Hizzoner” once dubbed as “the Mayor with Balls” was an embarrassing flop that fell flat on her face.

She looked like that Aesop’s fable my father told me when I was a kid: The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. It was about a shepherd who got the ire of the villagers who ran to his succor every time he yelled an imagined “wolf” that would endanger his herd.

The presence of opposition lawmakers Alvin Coquia and Malou Fernandez in the Local Development Council’s meeting was not really to defect as insinuated by the “pasabog” but to heed the Local Government Code’s mandate to “assist the corresponding Sanggunian in setting the direction of economic and social development, and coordinating development efforts within its territorial jurisdiction”. Not to mention the warning of Department of Interior & Local Government Provincial Chairman Virgilio Sison (who’s in the national news lately about those faked suicides of onion farmers in Bayambang) for the immediate passage of the P1.3 billion snagged city budget otherwise the opposition members face administrative charges because of their procrastination.

After reading my blog’s Opposition MembersDefected to Dagupan Mayor? a DILG honcho in a town sent to me in Facebook a video clip of opposition stalwart Red Mejia with Coquia and Fernandez in a bar a few days after that failed supposed defection's hullabaloo.

Damn, I should be titling or headlining my blog: Opposition Members DESERTED to Dagupan Mayor but am afraid that presumed grammar police and news reporter Atong Remogat would correct me again how the word DESERT entered the scene when there was no desert like in Saudi Arabian Desert. Or how come DESERT came into play when the topic was Dagupan City and not the Filipino sumptuous DESSERT like creamy leche flan and the yummy ginataang bilo-bilo.

 What say you Dagupan City’s intellectuals Prof. Nick Melecio and nonpareil writer Rex Catubig?

The city solons on that video at FB seem to mock their opponents and the Mayor that they were still intact and ready to rumble with their war of attrition with Fernandez who was responsible for the misery and defeat of their patron former Mayor Brian Lim.

A pro-Lim’s broadcaster said he called Coquia and Fernandez, a Dentist, if they succumbed to Mayor Fernandez's entreaty but the duo denied it.

During Lim’s last two years, Fernandez majority councilors stalled in approving the P1.38 billion 2022 budget.

After Fernandez won the May 9, 2022 poll, she saw to herself that she was almost kaput without the majority of the solons backing her proposed ordinances like the P1.3 billion 2023 budget.

Her cousin Vice Mayor Dean Bryan L. Kua becomes political inutile as he became a decoration in the august body reigned by Majority Leader Mejia and the ex-mayor’s mother Celia Lim.

Dagupan Citry is the only local government unit in Region-1, son of a gun, that still need to have its 2023 budget to be approved. Most of these LGUs okayed already their budget in the two-and-half months of the previous year as mandated by law.

The war of nerves in the Sanggunian Panlungsod (legislature) is embarrassing for the people of Dagupan. Without the budget we would not have the 20% development fund for infrastructure projects this year. It means no new school buildings or their repairs, no new roads, and others.

With a mayor who cried wolf in a dropped of a hat and with the anti-progress opposition members whose hatred with Fernandez afflict the more than 200, 000 populations (where most if not many of their voters are for sale), this city is going to the dogs.

READ MY OTHER BLOG:

How Mayor, Guv, Solon Steal to Fund Their Election

MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

Follow

I am a twenty years seasoned Op-Ed Political Writer in various newspapers and Blogger exposing government corruptions, public officials's idiocy and hypocrisies, and analyzing local and international issues. I have a master’s degree in Public Administration and professional government eligibility. I taught for a decade Political Science and Economics in universities in Metro Manila and cities of Urdaneta, Pangasinan and Dagupan. Follow me on Twitter @totoMortz or email me at totomortz@yahoo.com.