By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

BOARD Member Alfonso C. Bince, Jr. really has a knack for unpredictability. Sometimes, he telegraphs his moves, sometimes he does not. Sometimes he walks the talk, sometimes he does not. So, okay, maybe it’s really the lawyer in him that explains his behavior and keeps both critics and admirers dumbfounded by his actions most times.

For him, perhaps, the world around is a big trial court and he has to summon all guile, gimmick and gumption to prove a point and make the adversary think he’s losing a case when he’s actually winning one.

At the last sangguniang panlalawigan session, so mediamen covering the regular deliberations have reported, he surprised almost everyone by authoring a measure on the floor for a move that he had earlier this year vehemently questioned for being ambiguous and to some extent, suspicious – the authorizing of the Provincial Governor to enter into a loan agreement with the Development Bank of the Philippines, this time, for some P650 million.

Bince, a veteran legislator who’s been in, out and back in again several times in the provincial board beginning with the time of the late Agbayani patriarch, Aguedo, may have suddenly been so “convinced” of the wisdom for the loan by the “persuasion flights” of the governor or his political factotums that he has found it not beyond his integrity to take an about-face position.

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Earlier, one may recall, the Board Member from Rosales had practically rebuked advisers and followers of Governor Amado T. Espino for ever so much as suggesting the availment of an open credit line, a “blank check” so to speak, for some still unclear provincial development projects. He had said then that if the province has to borrow from the banks at all, it should be a direct loan where the terms are more clear and specific and the requirements stringent. We wholeheartedly agreed with him them.

And we would still agree with him now – if it is ever shown and proved that indeed what the province is borrowing to the tune of 650 million cool bucks is direct loan, with all the necessary limitations and conditions attached to such, as to disallow easy and quick withdrawal or release.

That the amount to be loaned has been scaled down (it was almost a billion pesos, the first time around it was hatched, we recall) should indicate that the governor and his allies have, more or less, come down to earth and decided discretion is the better part of bravado when it comes to mortgaging the financial future of the province.

We’ll see in the next few weeks or months what exactly the Honorables of the Sanggunian and the Mighty One at the Capitol are thinking of funding from the P650 million “pie in the sky.” Then we’ll know if the Bince somersault was justified after all.

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I bet you didn’t notice this a day or days after the Cosme juggernaut in Pangasinan.

Hawks, yes, hawks, (wawak in the dialect) black and big, the bird you have not seen often the past many years were flying and circling high in the sky overhead, in bigger numbers of five or six at a time, with their distinct cry.

These birds of prey, that have rarely been seen for decades now since I was a boy running in the ricefields and hills of Agno during school vacation or as a grade schooler playing at West Central with classmates like overseas bank exec Arturo Bustria, Upang chair Cesar Duque, the Calimlims ( Domingo and Gregorio), Victor Manela, Lucia Guadiz, Victoria Narvaez, Caroline Philips, Melquiades Santiago, among others, were suddenly (and ominously) up and about in the sky like they were doing an aerial survey.

I could have sworn, for one instant, they were sent by some Noah on an Ark to check if there was any sign of life left after the typhoon — but I quickly checked myself.

Ornithologists and bird-watchers and keepers probably have some explanation or two for this,uh, ‘phenomenon’ but one thing I know from books, these God’s creatures know widespread destruction when they see one – and proceed to scavenge accordingly.

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Temporarily, people in Pangasinan, have forgotten about the gloomy rice situation after the calamity that has just visited them. Cosme’s cataclysmic visit had a way of making any other concern secondary to picking up the broken pieces of our civilized life. We, everyone, have been busy rebuilding and reconstructing our shelters to bother about whether one cooks or eats regular rice or just porridge. At least after the first dozen days of the calamity.

But now, the reality is slowly but surely sinking in — again.
Where to get cheap rice, when the NFA weekly deliveries to Bigasang Bayan outlets are gobbled up by buyers fast before one can say “Gloria!” and when the price of commercial rice has again gone up to P36 to P38 (in our part of the world, that is) after showing signs (before Cosme came) of going down to P34 as
NFA bombarded the markets with its imported rice at the government-subsidized price of P18.25 .

The lean months of July to September, extending even to early part of October should be the litmus test for the rice-eating Filipinos’ survival.

There is sense in heeding the advice to stock up on the staple now for family use – as the down-to-earth mayor of the prosperous city of Urdaneta keeps telling his citymates all the time – while the supply lasts and while the price, prohibitive as it already is by ordinary living standards, has not yet reached stratospheric heights.

SAID AND DONE: Belated birthday wishes to a daughter who knows what she wants and proceeds to get this with grace and determination, Venus May of the Philippine Information Agency and this paper, last May 30. She’s one girl who can combine married life and career without losing poise and uh, well, pounds….Gardenia Café and Restaurant at groundfloor of the Vicar Hotel on A. B. Fernandez Avenue, Dagupan City, operated by Chito and Celsa has closed shop – day after Cosme’s Visit. Now both singers and ‘croakers’ from the local media are looking for an alternate homey type of dining and video-oke place and nothing seems to be in immediate sight in the area except Jana’s Restaurant nearby – minus the videoke, that is.