Liars

Hole of Justice

By Peter G. Jimenea

World Class Liars!

Wow! Microsoft, Ford Motors, General Motors, Chrysler and all the greats in US industry are investing in Iloilo City, thanks to the junket of Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog and his royal jesters who trooped to New York City to dance in the streets alongside the 2011 Dinagyang champion. 

This is a big joke of course. Filipino movie celebrities and TV stars were the real crowd drawers there. Sending a motley crowd of clowns to dance with the 2011 Dinagyang champ, and march them off in obscure streets of the big city is no assurance to open the floodgates for investors flocking into the kingdom of a king without yet a palace.

Microsoft big bosses are not that naïve to relocate their office from Silicon Valley to the city with a river known as the biggest septic tank next to Pasig City in Asia. Mayor Mabilog and company “invaded” New York using the high school students whose performance was a shadow of their form that made them champion!

They bled the city of P1.5 million, funding that travel of more than 20 persons led by the mayor and members of the city council, tourism officials, and underlings, to celebrate the independence day of the archipelago. In a street-smart parlance -sharing a joyride with the kids.

They paraded and waved Filipino flags in obscure roads of New York to eat suman, dinuguan, batchoy, latik and other native delicacies of our own. In this age of information technology, they need not bleed the city coffers by spending huge sums to physically be there overseas to sell. Let your computers do it. There is no need to walk when pressing buttons and the keyboard can do it all in seconds.

The worldwide web (WWW) has emerged as a powerful communication tool. Recent history tells us of authoritarian regimes crumbling from popular upheavals fueled by the internet. The fallen dictatorships in the Middle East have initially suppressed traditional media (print and broadcast) to prolong rules. But www cut that short and abruptly. 

In this IT age, one may erect a seven-storey building of 14,000 square meters for only P350 million as what local architects, contractors and civil engineers had been insisting. But the mayor who’s still in pre-IT age, stubbornly ignores them. For him erecting the structure at 750 million is for the Ilonggos to be proud of their City Hall. 

He probably believes that it is still alright for the people if he must have an exclusive elevator, a P35M lot for parking space, and a 15-million statue of one we do not even know. All that matters is that, it will make us proud of ourselves to have a “world class” edifice.

But the burden of shouldering that extreme extravagance will not be carried by him, but by all of us to pay accelerated taxes. I might be brash to say this, but it is widely believed that while Mayor Mabilog is still in his cooking stage to eat, -  Cong. Jerry Trenas has already finished eating and is now in the process of digesting all that he had taken.

Remember our P132M losses in that Iloilo City Government Housing Project in Pavia, Iloilo? Not a single unit was built out of the 413 low cost houses as stipulated in the contract between the contractor Mr. Alex Trinidad and the city government represented by then Mayor Trenas.

Imagine the structural design of the City Hall building that cost P12M? What an expensive drawing, yet, former city councilor Atty. Antonio Pesina claimed to have never seen it. And this is for Ripley’s Believe it or Not, for nine long years in office, Mayor Trenas is the only local chief executive without a project whatsoever!

  

Mayor Mabilog is a working mayor far different from Trenas. But to pursue the additional loan of P260M for the completion of a “World Class” City Hall is too much for his extravagance. The first P350M and the second loan of P105M for the city hall construction by then Mayor Trenas were all tainted with lies.

So I hope Mayor Mabilog who is already in the pot would not jump into the fire, or else, his dreamed palace might bear a mark; This is your “World Class” City Hall - a  project of ……. see the title.

More about Jerry and me

Hole of Justice

By Peter G. Jimenea

More about Jerry and me

A lot of people had been asking why I dislike Cong. Jerry Trenas in most articles I wrote about him. They failed to know that I’m with the man when he first ran for mayor but lost. But after he won later as city mayor, he has done nothing for nine years except, to enrich himself at the expense of the taxpayers.

Mr. Danny Fajardo, the publisher of a local daily in Western Visayas disagreed. He did not inquire as they are friends. But now he does, after he transferred venue of his TV program and learned that then Mayor Trenas has no accomplished valuable-project whatsoever for the past nine years!

The Trenas Boulevard along the Iloilo River that he named after his father is not a city project but part of the Japan Flood Control Program for the province. The same is true with two fly-over constructed in the city which were projects of national government fund.

At the start of his first term as elected mayor in 2001, Mayor Trenas pushed-through only a hand-over project from former Mayor Mansueto Malabor, the construction of the Iloilo Terminal Market where a P17M was immediately released without the public getting wind of it.

Also in year 2001, Trenas implemented another project of former Mayor Malabor, the construction of 413 units of Low-Cost Houses for the poor city hall employees in the city government property at Pavia, Iloilo. It was bankrolled by a P120M loan from the PNB.

The term of payment for the contractor‘s billing is direct to the bank and crooks find no money in this transaction. So all of a sudden the loan obligation of the city government with PNB was transferred to the PVB. On why, your guess is as good as mine, but it incurred a travel cost of P12M for such a walking distance!

Sad to say, the contractor’s use of substandard materials was discovered. Thus, the city council passed a unanimous resolution urging Mayor Trenas to rescind the contract and sue Alex Trinidad the contractor. The latter, however, abandoned the project without a unit completed out of the 413 houses in contract with the city government.

Surprisingly, Trenas continued paying Trinidad’s billing in millions and the daily interest for the loan at P17,000 a day including holidays. Imagine how much we spent for over a year? The stepping over the line of pardonable behavior is understandable among public officials in bondage of indebtedness.

But this abuse of the taxpayers’ money is injustice that cries to God for vengeance. Look, despite the residual imperfection in the contractor’s billings their will was done. But the payments are tainted with grave abuse of discretion as not even one of the 413 units under contract was completely built by the contractor.

Trenas also ordered the old city hall building demolished not on the bid price of P800 but for a higher cost of P1.2M on negotiated contract. But in common practice, the contractor pays the owner for his would-be demolished buildings. On why he did otherwise, we have yet to know. But remnant of the old city hall building in millions is nowhere to be found!

What’s more, he rented the third floor of a mall where city employees are holding offices. As to the rent, nobody knows.  But why demolish the old city hall building when it is still of use for hundreds of city employee now renting office in a mall?

The ongoing construction of the new City Hall building is what got us so mad about. The original cost of P350M is already enough according to Trenas to finish it.  But he secretly applied and got a new loan of P105M for the same purpose. Hiding it from the public’s irreverent gaze is bad, but acquiring it without authority from the city council is worse.

Liar, he can only be. I’ll bet my balls that former Mayor Trenas has no project to crow about whatsoever from 2001 to 2009. I also tend to agree with his critics claim that he is the most despised mayor this city ever had. His constituents have nothing to remind them of him but absurd legacy. Here, the tragedy is not to go but having no one to remember you!