THE PEN SPEAKS
Danny O. Sagun

DAGUPAN City Mayor Benjie Lim can’t help but take a snipe at Speaker Joe de Venecia when opportunity comes. Playing host lately to a group whose business name has the word “promise” in it, Lim lauded his visitors for keeping their word “unlike a politician we know who makes a lot of promises but delivers less.”

The House leader invariably earned a lot of monicker especially from among barangay captains for making promises left and right on the delivery of projects and services that would come in so short a time. “I tell you, in one week…” has often been heard from him every time he speaks before a crowd in his sorties here as though his promise is sure to be delivered ASAP, a month or two if not literally within one week.

Still recall how so confidently he said soon after the 1990 killer quake that in one week the badly-damaged Magsaysay bridge would rise again? He was not yet the House speaker then yet but he already made that bold pronouncement. Then President Cory Aquino could only smile wryly.

But that’s JDV. If he didn’t talk in hyperbole, he wouldn’t be JDV. All he wanted to convey perhaps was that he can make things happen fast and deliver so much. Such tactic has however boomeranged on him as people, even among his close supporters and leaders have begun to doubt his promises. Once he speaks, there will be that lingering doubt already in the minds of his listeners if he is sincere or he is just trying to get their attention via lots of promises coupled with his emotion-filled loud voice.

In fairness to him, the good speaker we think is doing his best to fulfill his promises only that he is given to exaggeration at times, if not most of the time, when he speaks. His critics see him as a trapo (traditional politician) in every sense of the word yet he seems very good at it as proven by his political exploits.

People are getting excited of what may become a battle for the decade featuring him and the Dagupan hizzoner if elections push thru next year. We have talked to some keen observers and they feel Lim could stage an upset and earn for him the tag giant slayer. “May tulog si Speaker,” they say.

Judging from Lim’s recent actuations, there seems to be no turning back anymore on a face-off with JDV. Abangan.