The devil's hand

THE MIRACLE that was the quarry collection under the Eddie T. Panlilio administration – a whopping P1 million daily as benchmark established in his very first month in office – has, in only one year, gone to the devil’s hand.
Plunged, nay, plummeted have the quarry collections to a deeply disturbing P31,035,000 year-to-year difference. That sordid financial freefall, pointed out by no less than the License & Fees Division of the Provincial Treasurer’s Office (PTO).
The PTO’s November 3 Quarry Situationer reported a four-month (July-October, 2008) collection of P54,555,000, broken down to: P13.49 million, P12.88 million, P14.49 million and P13.905 million.
Now, interface this with the collection for the same period last year of P85,590,000, broken down to: P24.41 million, P20.91 million, P21.18 million and P19.09 million. It does not take an Einstein to see an average of almost P8 million lost every month from there.
And that’s not even the end of it. A PTA honcho warned that the quarry collections “would continue to plunge as the year comes to a close unless immediate and proper measures are taken to curb factors causing the decline.”
What these factors are, he did not have to say.
We have long been hearing the Reverend Governor and his tsu-tsu-wari-wari-wa chorus blaming everything from the rains to the Mabalacat-Bamban boundary dispute, from the opening of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway to overloaded dump trucks, as the causes of the downtrend in the quarry collections. Which led Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao to smirk, “there must be more to it than the rainy season, the SCTEx and overloading of trucks.”
The coach of starless Red Bull in the PBA couched in so many words the root cause of the drop in the quarry take: “You establish a benchmark in your neophyte year. That should be surpassed in the following year, as you have gained more experience and expertise in doing the same thing. Paurong ang nangyayari ngayon. (What is happening is retrogression.)”
That – Yeng need not have stressed – is pure and simple incompetence. On the part of… who else? Not putative provincial administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu, bobo!
The story of the fall in the quarry collection is well written – not in the stars, duh – in those streamers strung around the capitol grounds.
“Sa Balas Boys ang hirap. Kay Panlilio-Dabu ang sarap.” Suffer Panlilio-Dabu, ye quarrymen, as one screams.
The sheer drop in the quarry collections started at the time the “original” quarrymen of the Biyaya a Luluguran at Sisikapan (Balas) started their protest action, and continued its fall as the Balas Boys pitched their protest tents and were replaced by Panlilio-Dabu with new checkers and supervisors.
The dismal quarry collections have fully vindicated those boys: well into their third month, still shouting their voices hoarse: “Panlilio resign!”
Now, what has Panlilio still got to brag about? What miracle still obtains in the heavily depleted quarry collections?
Again – as it is our wont whenever we talk of miracles – we segue to Nora Aunor in her defining role of the faith healer Elsa in the now classic film Himala: “Walang himala. Ang himala ay nasa puso. Ang himala ay nasa tao.” No miracle there, indeed.
Indeed? So what was that Tagalog wag saying? “Ibinigay na sa iyo ang santo, bahala ka na sa milagro.” So the saint has been handed to you, now, the miracle is all up to you. A different kind of miracle, yeah, the devil’s handiwork there. Of the vanishing quarry collections finding their way into some deep pockets somewhere.
The more things change, the more they look the same? It’s getting to look a lot like...the Lapids at the capitol?