SCHOOLS, students planning to go on a field trip to Iloilo City, better think twice or go elsewhere.

Five-year olds in control of city hall now consider the city of 350,000 people a separate republic and nation, hostile to the rest of Iloilo and the outside world.

That xenophobia is summed up in a statement “Ang amon, amon. Indi na pwede nga diktahan kami sg taga-gwa! (Our affairs are strictly ours alone and no outsider can dare dictate on us!)” that oozes from the big mouth of one councilor who looks and croaks like a Hawaiian toad and even thinks as one.

October 29, 2008 – and let history take note of how idiotic city hall has become – a bus load of elementary pupils from Passi City went on a field trip to Iloilo City. One of their itineraries was the port area where they were to see the pier and Guimaras Strait where ships berthed.

They were issued the mayor’s permit and subsequently given the green light by the Traffic Mismanagement and Misengineering Unit. However, their educational tour was aborted.

The traffic mismanagement team barred them from getting to Payless Plaza where they were to take lunch, and to the pier area where the kids from the interior were to see the ships.

The reason given by city authorities was as idiotic as the racket called Perimeter Boundary Ordinance which restricts the entry of provincial PUJs to the city proper.

The pastor leading the school kids was aghast. He begged of city authorities to bend the ordinance, to interpret it according to its spirit that breaths life not to the letter that kills, so to speak. But Hawaiian Toad, a legislator and not the implementor, was adamant. The bus could not get in because the ordinance forbids it and I don’t want to make ourselves a butt of joke if we allowed that. So they were up only at Jaro Plaza and could not proceed further.

First off, Hawaiian Toad misses the point. Private cars, even 10-wheeler trucks littered the streets leading to Payless Plaza and the port area, traffic is a mess all city proper streets, why doesn’t he lift a finger to apply the full force of the ordinance by rounding up the real culprits — big trucks and private vehicles turning both sides of the streets into virtual garage for private vehicles, many parking diagonally, even vertically?

Second, the bus carrying the kids was chartered, or for private use; at that time, it was not a public carrier. Why pin it down instead of the real culprits of road bottlenecks—private trucks and cars?

Yes, Pepe and Pilar, Iloilo City Hall is not only full of crooks. Idiots litter it as well.

Next time around, people wishing to go on educational tours to Iloilo City, better skirt that separatist enclave and proceed instead to the scenic and historical sites in Miag-ao, Igbaras, Guimbal, Dingle, Sta. Barbara, Januiay, Carles, Concepcion, and many more.

Why we say that city hall is not only crawling with crooks but with idiots as well, is typified by a single fact that it is the only “highly urbanized city” in the country without a seat of government or city hall.

Pototan boasts of its spacious government center comprising three buildings. Its biggest the fourth structure is the astrodome, its sports center.

Passi City, home of the school kids victims of the idiotic traffic ordinance of Iloilo City, has three structures in its government center perched on hill top surrounded by trees – a two storey city hall, a hall of justice, and a newly finished lie-in clinic which has three levels and bigger than the city hall itself. Across the public market is the Passi City College.

Guimbal has a government center comprising three structures – the town hall facing the sea, the old town hall which now serves as hall of justice and headquarters for the PNP and the Bureau of Fire Protection. Beside it is a covered gym that can accommodate more than seven thousand people.

Miag-ao, on the other hand, has a two-storey spacious town hall and a cultural center bigger than the space at Robinson’s Place being occupied by the executive department of the Iloilo City government.

Iloilo City, in contrast, is an embarrassment. It has neither city college like Passi’s nor sports center like Pototan’s or Guimbal’s. It has no city hospital. It has only four district clinics which even if put on top of one another still pales in comparison to the new lie-in clinic of Passi City.

Worse, Iloilo City has no city hall. Its legislative body occupies the second level of the Terminal Market while the executive the third level of a mall.

It had a two-storey city hall at Plaza Libertad once but its capo di tutti capi, Mayor Jerry Treñas, had it demolished like the idiot we know in a Tarzan movie who cut trees so create the need for hats.

Treñas tore down the building last year on the pretext he would build a seven-storey city hall in its stead. After the demolition, he changed mind and decided to rent the third level of Robinson’s. He swung again and decided to buy the old Trader’s Royal Bank building across Freedom Grandstand but after much criticisms, shifted thought again and decided to stake it out instead at the old Iloilo Airport which offered the price of P2,500 per square meters.

City hall has agreed to buy 4,500 square meters of land from Megaworld which owns the old airport land but by some stage-managed trick, the seller jacked up the price to P3,000 after a day’s notice.

That led the public to entertain dirty thoughts that the price was rigged by mutual consent of the parties to benefit city hall crooks particularly. That suspicion continues to whip up by the fact that the legal counsel of Megaworld is an associate of the Treñas law firm, if not the office itself.

After the Megaworld brouhaha hit the press, the (dis)honorable mayor changed mind again, this time, settling back to the old site that has become a “peryahan” on weekends.

What a shame! Five-year olds in control of city hall scuttled a field trip of school kids from Passi City based on its literal interpretation of an ordinance that in itself is oppressive, yet are unable to smell the rat in big time thievery.

The demolition of the old city hall itself stinks. A bidder who offered P800,000 got it but the (dis)honorable mayor revoked the award and surreptitiously negotiated with another to clinch a P1 million contract sans public bidding. What idiocy!

2 Responses to “What idiocy!”

• 1
  jell
  November 8th, 2008 13:08

  It’s just disgusting to note that Mayor Jerry Trenas and company are already immune to media criticisms, especially on their principal role on the housing scandal in Pavia, and in the Perimeter Boundary Ordinance. Jerry is yet to dispel the public rumor that he and his brother Francis are behind the PUJ terminal in Ungka, Jaro through their dummy known as a certain Pueblo. This Pureblo of Molo has no business nor property to enable him to erect such huge facility and buy the spacious prime property where the terminal stands.
  What happened to the “stranded” school kids from Passi chartering a buss and denied entry in the city is but the consequence of the greed for profits which is the motive for the Perimeter Boundary Ordinance that justified the establishment of privately owned terminals.

  You did a great service for exposing the banality of Trenas administration.
• 2
  ROMELO SUSTITUIDO
  November 10th, 2008 22:45

  The City of Tagum in Davao which I got its cityhood only about six to seven years ago, is an example of a blessed place for having public officials of wit, sincerity, and a well demonstrated political will. Amazingly, people of this this young component city humbly told me about the a livelihood program and assistance with 98% collection effeciency that ensures its continueous expansion; presented and walked us along their eight-lane primary roads aside from an outside lane for the tri-cycles, a lane of bricks for bycycles and for the strollers; none of an over pass but an under pass; telecommunication and power lines are kept in the culverts or covered drainage cannals along the roads; a city hospital with socialized system to allow well to do ones subsidize the expenses of the poor patients; a city high school with covered walks and is slowly gaving birth c city college; a water processing station to provide free potable water for domestic use of the city hall employees; a city hall improved from a two storey small structure into a four storey one spending less than a million of pesos (unlent) which is simple but full of accomodating employees and atmosphere not to mention free coffee or juice for the visiting clients; none of a motor pool but a motor bay with hundreds of dump trucks, a number of every heavy equipments, asphalt mixing plants, stone crashers, and pool of engineers; a schollarship program free from intervention of politicians and is purely run by private sectors; strangely, a mayor that demolishes multi-million private structures that obstracts road right of ways, councilors who think of legislative measures that will directly touch the lives of their constituents who are young but well guided towards real statemanship and maintain humility despite of evident profeciency in their legislative functions. I really feel so ashamed, when during a lunch with them, Councilor Bermudez asked me how their counterparts here in Iloilo City are working, and I just replied “Dugay na ko kaayo wa maka uli ug Iloilo Sir ba, kay halos mag eight years na gud ko dinhi sa Mindanao, wa na ko’g ideya about Iloilo, pero guwapo sir kay murag mga officials pud mo sa South Cotabato, gwapo ug mga programa ba.”

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