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.