Asenso model

FOR THE high price of panambak -- that’s earth used as filling material, to you non-Kapampangans – a million dollar investment project was pulled out of San Simon.
Thus rued Mayor Digos Canlas of the great opportunity lost forever to his town. And that is just one woe wrought about by the capitol’s cluelessness on the nature, if not the dynamics, of panambak.
Digos claims the P1,500-per-truck filling material at the time of the Lapid son at the capitol has ballooned to over P3,000 per truck under the watch of the Reverend Governor.
Endangered too of being mothballed is the Libreng Pabahay para sa Mahirap on a 9.7-hectare site acquired through a donation from the ambassador of China and with a counterpart national government commitment of P35 million. Again, it is a problem of panambak, says Digos.
Then there is the apparent collateral damage wrought by the new P120-million bridge to the farmlands in its vicinity. Farmers have to resort to double pumping to make irrigation water flow to the farmlands. Thus, doubling too the cost of irrigation. And a large hectarage of farmlands is still covered with the debris Mount Pinatubo vomited almost 17 years ago.
So what has got to do with panambak?
“Everything,” says Digos. The farmers want to desilt the irrigation canals to increase the reservoir of water they hold. They wish their lahar-covered lands be scraped of the debris and made productive again. The end-product of desilting and scraping? Panambak.
Now, if only the capitol can free panambak from a purely commercial categorization, then, Canlas says, all will be good for San Simon.
Perhaps Canlas can go seek some advice from the once reigning barako of Mexico. Yes, the sometimes lamented former Mayor Ernesto Punsalan himself.
For all his perceived brusko posturing, Senor Don Ernesto wielded the wisdom of the rural folk. Or have we forgotten how the Great Asensado Solomonically dichotomize the quarry-panambak predicament thus : “There is no quarrying in Mexico. There is only the scraping of private agricultural lands, in the pursuit of our noble objective to make these highly productive again. For the prosperity of our people.”
And the Lapid capitol left Don Ernesto largely to himself in the pursuit of his Asenso Mexico. Unmindful and unintervening even when loose talks circulated around the province that SM City Pampanga, Robinsons Starmills, uppity Lakeshore, and the rehabilitated North Luzon Expressway were all built upon the panambak of Mexico.
So there.
Minalin Mayor Edgar Flores should take the cue from Don Ernesto to cut his own Gordian Knot of the quarry-panambak tied by his own townmate, the governor.
The extraction of panambak from the silted rivers, farmlands and fishponds of Minalin intended for road rehabilitation and widening, for town beautification – under the Punsalan precedent – does not constitute quarrying and therefore should not be taxed. Nor should it be covered with a permit from the capitol. The autonomy of the local government unit to pursue what is most advantageous, what is best for its constituency is at issue here.
What is best for the town is ever in the realm of the mayor, never in the province of the governor.
All the mayors of the quarry towns then, no, make that the Pampanga Mayors League, should make Don Ernesto their very own Consultant on Quarry Affairs.
And Don Ernesto would serve them better than where he is now, a decorative fixture called “Chief of Political Affairs” in the office of Senator Lapid.