ANDA —The municipal mayor of this coastal town has defended the erection of statues of elephants near the municipal building.

Mayor Nestor Pulido denied that the statues are a waste of money as insinuated by members of the town council because he said the elephants remind of Anda’s and Pangasinan’s humble beginning.

Anda used to be an island town of Pangasinan but during the administration of then President Fidel Ramos, the town finally ended its isolation form the rest of Pangasinan with the construction of a concrete bridge that linked the island to barangay Catubig in Bolinao.

“My answer to my critics is, that local government executives must not only provide food for the stomach but also food for the spirit,” said Pulido, father of female television reporter Maki Pulido.

Elephants, he argued, are parts of Anda’s and Pangasinan’s history, citing supposed historical records showing that it was only in Anda, in the entire northern Luzon, where elephant fossils were unearthed in the early 19th century.

The fossils, he said, proved that elephants once existed in Anda if not in the entire province of Pangasinan. Elephants are indigenous in Asian mainland, including China.

This proves, Pulido said, that at one time—about 500,000 years ago—Anda was part of the Asian mainland, connected to China through land bridges.

Unearthed by archaeologists in the early 19th century, the elephant fossils are being preserved to remind the present and future generations of Anda’s distant past, Pulido explained.

Defending his administration’s effort to make Anda’s ancient history enshrined for the present and the future generations, Pulido asked: ”Are we not proud to know that once upon a time, we were connected to mainland China?”