By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

ALL signs, so far, point to some hesitation on the part of City Hall to take the court option in the apparently botched transaction for the Awai lot that cost the city government P16 million.

Many people, including former Councilor Alex De Venecia are therefore loudly expressing concern that if those behind the purchase of the 30-hectare property that was to serve as sanitary landfill for Dagupan’s garbage are given kid glove treatment and not haled to court, the new city administration stands to lose much respect among the people.

In fairness to the Fernandez administration though, perhaps it’s not really hesitation but deliberation that has, so far, stayed its hand in going after the characters involved.

Despite a city legal officer itching very much to file the raps, the sobering moves of Mayor Al Fernandez – confirmed no less by CLO George Mejia himself in an interview published elsewhere in the Pangasinan Star pages this week – indicate the filing of cases against stalwarts of the former city administration is being considered, yes, but only as a last recourse.

Recovery of the property from the CARP coverage thru proper channels is still the top priority, beginning with the firing off of a letter to the Agrarian Reform department interposing objection to its coverage of the property in San Jacinto.

Needless to say, going by bureaucratic responses to such matters, concrete, definite action on this will take some time – much time – after some heavy exchange of communications and legal opinions by both sides. Before one knows it, a few months or a year may have elapsed before the city government gets to plot and carry out, its final moves on the issue.

Would the issue already get cold by then? You tell us.

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Some quarters claim the hesitation – or deliberate moves – of the new city administration is quite understandable.

Overeagerness to file a case, after all, according to a City Hall source, could unduly (duly?) hurt some incumbents who may have had some role, direct or indirect, in the transaction as in laying the basis for the purchase and/or “paving the road to perdition with good intentions,” or somesuch.

To our mind, public officials –incumbent, re-elected officials– especially, are always very wary and concerned about Fire Prevention – especially when they know that their shirts are, more or less, flammable.

And if Alex DV, himself a former councilor (who was, if our reckoning is correct, not yet a city alderman when the Awai deal was hatched) sounds rather too vocal (eager?) about “letting the law take its due course” here, it could only come from his own estimation of the guilt – or innocence – of some other parties, other than former Mayor Benjie S. Lim and former City
Administator Raffy Baraan, that is. We could be wrong, but do we note some sound of fiendish glee in his, uh, cry for accountability?

Whadyathink?

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May we return to our former column pieces about the need to improve our Rural Health Units (RHUs)?

Now that it’s dengue (hemorrhagic) fever season one again, we hope the RHUs will be getting the promised attention and material support that the provincial government vowed it was ready to extend to keep these outreach facilities useful and ready in community emergencies. We know not much time has elapsed since the ink on the last Capitol press releases regarding the provincial government’s avowals for improved RHU operations dried and the medicines and necessary training may not have been put in place yet.

But here’s a virtual dry-run presenting itself to the overlords at the Capitol and Urduja House and they should lose no time grabbing it, not just for its humanitarian implication but also its “peripheral” public relations appeal.

A humming, busy and on-its-toes RHU looking after the dengue-stricken in our far-flung communities and actually saving lives thru proper and timely referrals to appropriate medical facilities or on-the-spot medical intervention will speak volumes about official programs more graphically than any contrived “photo ops” or “motherhood statements” ever can.

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Have our traffic cops or the POSO (Yohoo, still around, guys?) really left Dagupan traffic to the dogs?

Just watch and count the big number of colorum tricycle units plying city streets these days, now at all hours of the day (not just in the evening as was the “rule” in the past) and the happy-go-lucky driving manners of many public utility vehicles especially (again) these tricycles. They weren’t this many when Robert Erfe Mejia’s orange boys were not yet turned into eunuchs.

What’s worse, they have made streetcorners and narrow road curbs their “official” terminals, making jeepneys, cars or buses negotiating these corners or curbs use a much wider turning space to avoid hitting the dangerously-parked trikes at the side. If that’s not a traffic hazard, we don’t know what is.

Just hang out and observe the curbs at Herrero-Perez where a good number of trikes especially in the evening wait for passengers. Buses coming from Mayombo swerving left to Perez Blvd. have to watch their maneuvers well or they’d smash into the trikes parked nonchalantly by the Herrero curb.

The cops and POSO guys at their posts nearby don’t seem to notice – or simply have tolerated – the careless practice of the trikemen, perhaps waiting for that accident waiting to happen in the area to bloody happen.