No to reconciliation
IT is in the highest interest of the people of the City of San Fernando that Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez and Third District Representative Dr. Reynaldo B. Aquino not reconcile.
Not now, that is. This is a printed iteration of my position on the issue Mayor Oca and Cong. Rey: Napapanahon na ba para magkasundo? tackled in the program Talking Points over San Fernando’s Infomax 8 channel last week.
Differences, nay, conflicts that dangerously tread on legal grounds cannot just be nonchalantly swept under the rug of reconciliation and then forgotten like nothing happened.
For one, a sudden reconciliation between Aquino and Rodriguez amid unresolved allegations of wrongdoing will foment thoughts of kutsabahan, of a partnership in corruption. Two, unresolved conflicts dangerously evolve into even more complex and complicated discords.
The Rodriguez camp fired the allegations that Aquino so mismanaged city hall that it was virtually bled dry during his watch – a measly P33 left in the supply funds, some dirty fingers dipped in the sacrosanct trust funds, unliquidated cash advances, etcetera. These need to be definitively resolved, not in the media where they have been amply ventilated, but – with the gravity of their ramifications – in the proper legal forum. Their resolution is a matter of duty for Rodriguez, a course of justice for Aquino, and in the interest of the Fernandino.
Then, there is the temporary restraining order the court granted Aquino on the P125-million loan the city government contracted with the Land Bank of the Philippines for the express purpose of erecting new school buildings, and rehabilitating the wet section of the old public market.
For this singular act, Aquino has been damned as “anti-poor, the enemy of public education, being of wealth and having been schooled in private institutions.”
Aquino was mongoose-quick in dodging those venomous strikes.
At a breakfast of burgers and fries Saturday last week with the Society of Pampanga Columnists, the congressman took more than the usual pains in presenting a pro-education platform as a personal commitment to the people not only of San Fernando but of the whole tersera distrito, to wit: more than 500 scholars in high school, vocational schools and colleges; his eponymous literacy program REY (Reading Enhancement for the Youth), school building construction, etc.
Says the doctor-legislator: “I am all for education. The TRO I sought is predicated on a legal question: That the special educational fund (SEF) cannot be used as a collateral. Not even for loans intended to benefit schools.”
Contrary to the opinion of the other panellists in the Infomax 8 show that the TRO has further disadvantaged the poor public school students, I hold the view that it had no detrimental effect.
A simple (-minded?) equation: If Aquino is right, then the city government will save a lot – no P125 million loan to pay translates to increase in the city coffers. If Rodriguez is right, then there will be 27 new school buildings all around the city.
Contrary to the fears of the other panellists that the Aquino-Rodriguez row would impair the growth of the city, it is my belief that it would even accelerate that growth.
Aquino and Rodriguez are perceived to be the best leaders the city ever had. Only the best therefore – perceivably – can come out of them. Aquino and Rodriguez in competition will be best for the city as one will try to outdo the other in performance, in the implementation of their respective development agenda for the city, in the extension of services to the Fernandino.
The requisite check-and-balance in clean governance comes in full effect here too, with one closely monitoring the other’s official – and even personal – transactions.
So do I aspire to see a perpetual conflict between Aquino and Rodriguez? No. Nothing, after all is permanent in this world. So they will reconcile. But hopefully only after a definitive resolution – a closure, if you may – of the allegations they threw at each other.
In this, and in other rows, political and otherwise, dialectics serves as a very good guide: Only after the thesis and its anti-thesis have clashed in a free, full and open encounter can the synthesis be realized.
As to those who rue the great cracks in, if not the end of, friendship between Aquino and Rodriguez, let me say this: There is no friendship to be sorry for. Aquino and Rodriguez were not friends. They were political allies.
Affirmed once more is that “truth so trite as long ago to have become a truism” – In politics, there are neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.
(Pampanga News, March 30-April 5, 2006)
Not now, that is. This is a printed iteration of my position on the issue Mayor Oca and Cong. Rey: Napapanahon na ba para magkasundo? tackled in the program Talking Points over San Fernando’s Infomax 8 channel last week.
Differences, nay, conflicts that dangerously tread on legal grounds cannot just be nonchalantly swept under the rug of reconciliation and then forgotten like nothing happened.
For one, a sudden reconciliation between Aquino and Rodriguez amid unresolved allegations of wrongdoing will foment thoughts of kutsabahan, of a partnership in corruption. Two, unresolved conflicts dangerously evolve into even more complex and complicated discords.
The Rodriguez camp fired the allegations that Aquino so mismanaged city hall that it was virtually bled dry during his watch – a measly P33 left in the supply funds, some dirty fingers dipped in the sacrosanct trust funds, unliquidated cash advances, etcetera. These need to be definitively resolved, not in the media where they have been amply ventilated, but – with the gravity of their ramifications – in the proper legal forum. Their resolution is a matter of duty for Rodriguez, a course of justice for Aquino, and in the interest of the Fernandino.
Then, there is the temporary restraining order the court granted Aquino on the P125-million loan the city government contracted with the Land Bank of the Philippines for the express purpose of erecting new school buildings, and rehabilitating the wet section of the old public market.
For this singular act, Aquino has been damned as “anti-poor, the enemy of public education, being of wealth and having been schooled in private institutions.”
Aquino was mongoose-quick in dodging those venomous strikes.
At a breakfast of burgers and fries Saturday last week with the Society of Pampanga Columnists, the congressman took more than the usual pains in presenting a pro-education platform as a personal commitment to the people not only of San Fernando but of the whole tersera distrito, to wit: more than 500 scholars in high school, vocational schools and colleges; his eponymous literacy program REY (Reading Enhancement for the Youth), school building construction, etc.
Says the doctor-legislator: “I am all for education. The TRO I sought is predicated on a legal question: That the special educational fund (SEF) cannot be used as a collateral. Not even for loans intended to benefit schools.”
Contrary to the opinion of the other panellists in the Infomax 8 show that the TRO has further disadvantaged the poor public school students, I hold the view that it had no detrimental effect.
A simple (-minded?) equation: If Aquino is right, then the city government will save a lot – no P125 million loan to pay translates to increase in the city coffers. If Rodriguez is right, then there will be 27 new school buildings all around the city.
Contrary to the fears of the other panellists that the Aquino-Rodriguez row would impair the growth of the city, it is my belief that it would even accelerate that growth.
Aquino and Rodriguez are perceived to be the best leaders the city ever had. Only the best therefore – perceivably – can come out of them. Aquino and Rodriguez in competition will be best for the city as one will try to outdo the other in performance, in the implementation of their respective development agenda for the city, in the extension of services to the Fernandino.
The requisite check-and-balance in clean governance comes in full effect here too, with one closely monitoring the other’s official – and even personal – transactions.
So do I aspire to see a perpetual conflict between Aquino and Rodriguez? No. Nothing, after all is permanent in this world. So they will reconcile. But hopefully only after a definitive resolution – a closure, if you may – of the allegations they threw at each other.
In this, and in other rows, political and otherwise, dialectics serves as a very good guide: Only after the thesis and its anti-thesis have clashed in a free, full and open encounter can the synthesis be realized.
As to those who rue the great cracks in, if not the end of, friendship between Aquino and Rodriguez, let me say this: There is no friendship to be sorry for. Aquino and Rodriguez were not friends. They were political allies.
Affirmed once more is that “truth so trite as long ago to have become a truism” – In politics, there are neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.
(Pampanga News, March 30-April 5, 2006)
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 9:28 AM
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