WITH no less than the Pangasinan Mayors’ League appearing to favor another town over his beloved Alaminos City in the matter of where the much coveted international airport in Pangasinan would be established, Mayor Hernani Braganza is in a daze.

PML president Ramon Guico, Jr of Binalonan, President Arroyo’s own cousin, and his league officers have made it known thru their resolution that they are ready to oppose even GMA’s own expressed preference for Alaminos made during her last State of the Nation Address and ultimately deprive Nani of his fondest dream.

Braganza, former President Fidel Ramos’ own nephew, is understandably smarting from the move of his fellow mayors but having been a former Cabinet member and congressman himself who can recognize an influential lobby when he sees one, may now be ready to allow for a possible eventual scrapping of the airport project. This even after the Department of Transportation and Communication had indulged him with a survey of possible sites earlier and kept his spirits up with some news that an initial funding for the airport project has been included in the agency’s budget for next year, 2008.

Such are the realities of political maneuvers. No project, however meritorious, is ever sure until the first nail is hammered in or the first earth filling is delivered and spread.

It would probably further heighten the disappointment of the young Braganza in the political system — once expressed just before the last elections when he announced to all and sundry he was not seeking another term as mayor only to reconsider at the last minute and run anyway – if the airport project finally and irretrievably slips out of his grasp.

But he can always bounce back with another one of his novel ideas for his city’s progress like the tri-point ferry service he had recently proposed to run to and from Alaminos, Dagupan City and San Fernando City in La Union mainly as a tourism come-on.

In this ferry service, his detractors among his fellow mayors, most of who come from inland or land-locked town, may not contest his geographical, make that nautical, “right” to pursue the project like they did “his” airport dream.

That is, unless they, in their desperate lights, relocate their towns to the coasts of the Lingayen Gulf to serve as Nani’s eternal spoilsports.