Yeng on 'Q'

GOV. EDDIE T. Panlilio has taken the limelight anew with his filing a plunder case before the Ombudsman against the Lapid father and son that sat at the Capitol for all of 12 years.
This is no demeaning the deed of Panlilio or diminishing its importance – we should all be glad about it and give it our support – but there is actually nothing new to this. Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao filed a similar case even at the time of the younger Lapid at the Capitol.
Here’s something from the cobwebbed baul of files I unearthed. It came out in The Voice, October 17-23, 2004.
Yeng on ‘Q’
NO honeymoon period, neither a reprieve – sounds maliciously like a stay of execution given a death convict – is the hundred-day détente between the sangguniang panlalawigan and the Office of the Governor on the contentious issue of Q, that’s for quarry, dummy.
So it’s fire and brimstone time at the Capitol with the end of that hundred-day period last week? Asked the Society of Pampanga Columnists of Vice Gov. Joseller “Yeng” Guiao over lunch at Max’s along GSO Road Monday.
A big NO was Yeng’s reply: “We gave the (provincial) Executive (branch) the courtesy – for a few more days – to explain and convince us of whatever substantial changes have been instituted to improve the revenue collections from the quarry industry.”
Supposed the Executive did not come out with any explanation?
“Then we shall demand for it.”
Supposed the Executive’s explanation is far from convincing?
“We should know what to do.”
Spoken like the foxy strategist that Yeng is. What he would do, he did not divulge.
“You shall certainly know when the time comes.”
Notwithstanding the overt odiousness of comparison in the whopping P150 million-plus annual revenues the Natural Resources Development Corp. chipped into the government coffers vis-à-vis the dismal P8 million the provincial government mustered, Yeng sees no malice in Congressman Rey B. Aquino’s House Resolution No. 267 – “Directing the appropriate committees of the House of Representatives to inquire into the income-generating prospects of the Pampanga quarry industry.”
“Every Kapampangan should support Cong Rey in this quest to mine revenues to sustain provincial development. The issue of quarry income assumes critical proportions in these times of fiscal crisis,” stressed Yeng.
Support Cong Rey, Yeng unreservedly does. So is he in turn supported by the provincial board, given the as-yet-unproved, thus still malicious, innuendoes of P50,000-inducements allegedly given to all but one at the sanggunian?
Was it Ashley manabat or Arnel San Pedro, both of Pampanga News, that impacted the reality into Yeng o his being “last man standing” at the Capitol on the Q inquiry?
“It can come to that. I am prepared.” Yeng makes a good impression of Bruce Willis in that dusty, bloody bang-bang saga. Cool, real cool. Like in that game where Shell Turbochargers led in double digits down to the last two minutes only to lose miserably to the rampaging Red Bull Barakos at the buzzer.
Life’s a ball, ain’t it? And Yeng is never short of balls. Think of that video grab of the skyscraper Marlou Aquino of Sta. Lucia blinking, nay, cowering in fear, at Yeng’s fiery dragon looks.
“Better to be the last man standing than dead man walking.” I told Yeng.
“I just have to look at my back more often. Or have some good friends looking out for me.” He shrugged, coolly.
Xxxxxx
THERE WAS no looking back for Yeng from there. Soon after this piece, he made his j’ accuse privileged speech damning the Lapid administration – the whole SP in damned and dumb silence, the so-called civil society groups and the priests invited most conspicuously absent.
Last man standing at the Capitol there indeed. Undeterred, Yeng subsequently filed plunder cases against the Lapids at the Ombudsman.