Mayor Bing's Legacy

Hole of Justice

by Peter G. Jimenea

The Mayor's Legacy

Few months after his election as local chief executive of Bacolod City, Mayor Bing Leonardia built a Kingdom in the City of Smile. But for nine years of Mayor Jerry Trenas, Iloilo City has no City Hall except a rented third floor of Robinsons Place as his Kingdom by the Mall.

This is the difference between the practical and the theoretical mayor. Look at the Iloilo City government housing project of 413 units for lowly city hall employees at Pavia, Iloilo. It started in 2001 and totally deteriorated in 2009, without a unit built.

The supposed 413 houses under the city government project was bankrolled by a loan of P120M from the Philippine National Bank (PNB). The contract was awarded to Ace Builders Construction, owned by Alex Trinidad, a friend of Mayor Trenas.

As the construction starts, the P120M loan from the PNB was transferred to the Philippine Veterans Bank (PVB). On why, only God knows. But the transfer cost has bind the city government to a new account of P132M due to alleged expensive documentation.

The problem starts when the materials used by the contractor were discovered of substandard quality. The city council passed a unanimous resolution urging the mayor to rescind the contract with Ace Builders and sue the contractor.

But Mayor Trenas cannot be intimidated by a resolution. He just ignored it until the intensity of negative tirades against the contractor became unbearable that the latter abandoned the project.

It was only a misfortune for the taxpayers that Mayor Trenas continued paying the contractor's billing in millions when the latter has already abandoned the project. Despite the contractor's unpardonable behavior, their will was done!

The deliberate waste of government fund is enough to hold the mayor liable for violation of RA 3019, or the Anti Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. Spending of taxpayers' money has official responsibility and accountability under the law. On why Mayor Trenas was unafraid of consequences, your guess is as good as mine!

The sad part of this story is the P17,000 daily interest for that loan paid by the city government for over a year including holidays, or a total of P24.7 million. The mayor should know that it is only for him and his contractor cohort that what he did was good!

The intervention of the Ombudsman stopped the mayor from paying the contractor but not until Alex Trinidad has pocketed P62.5 million of people's money from that “hao shiao” project or a “white elephant.”

This is our problem with officials who always ask compensation for what they never lost. They easily yield to temptation of greed. But this deliberate injustice to the taxpayers' money is crime that cries to God for vengeance!

Here, we cannot easily dispel the people's bad impression of Trenas as the most despised mayor Iloilo City ever had. Yet, he cited his victory a continuing trust of the people towards him, Sad to say, the people he referred to are poll-vendors!

For failure of the low-cost housing project, city employees are badly disillusioned. They believed now that the mayor and the underlings he had been tapping overtly professed what they covertly undertake.

He also promised us a City Hall but we only heard about the blueprint of the building nothing more. Even then Kgd. Tony Pesina claimed to have not seen that very expensive architectural drawing that cost – P12 million!.

Lowly City Hall employees are most sorely tempted to steal but don't. Now they have to tolerate brave words to save face. The failed low-cost housing project of the city government is already a vital document by which I shall judge them.

A 2010 COA report also revealed the city property, plant and equipment (PPE) at the start of Mayor Trenas last term, has a book value of P1.3B. But after audit, the unreconciled balance amounts to P821M. This mess is due to lack of supporting documents or no document at all.

The nine years of Trenas as mayor of Iloilo City is smack of unabated anomaly which become a scroll that forms the basis of their blasphemy. The Bacolod City Hall is already a legacy of Mayor Bing Leonardia. Here in Iloilo City, what more absurd legacy can we ask?