By DANNY O. SAGUN

THE Philippine Health Insurance regional office is not moving to another place as reported earlier but it will remain in Dagupan City.

Lawyer Gonzalo Duque made this assurance last week before mediamen, quoting his younger brother Francisco III, who is health secretary. The health secretary was formerly Philhealth president himself before assuming his Cabinet position.

Gonzalo, a former vice-governor and now president of the family’s
Lyceum-Northwestern University, said the size and the population of Pangasinan were considered in the decision of the Philhealth board to retain their regional office here, which is located on M.H. del Pilar street.

If it eventually comes to term with the city government, it may yet transfer to the new Malimgas market second or third floor.

Reports said that the regional office was to be transferred to San Fernando City in La Union where most regional offices of national government agencies are located being the regional center of Ilocos.

Duque said he opposes the location of regional offices in that place when in fact, Pangasinan, he pointed out, has more than half of the total regional population, and therefore has a logical right to host such regional offices.

If we’re correct, San Fernando bagged that privilege during the time of former President Ferdinand Marcos even when it was then a mere town. Attempts by some Pangasinan political leaders to regain that privilege for Dagupan City have all proved futile till today..

We think it would now be difficult to have that privilege again because many regional offices are now located in their own buildings. They could not just vacate them. What we can only probably do is maintain the status quo for regional offices stationed in the province like the NIA and PCIC in Urdaneta and the Philhealth here. Maybe we can entice some offices to relocate here thru some incentives.

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Imagine a blind “seeing” a movie?

Mediamen at the Meet the Press forum last Thursday had a good laugh when they heard Makati Mayor Jojo Binay boast that he provides free movies for blind persons from that city, a privilege long enjoyed by senior citizens there.

Binay, who came here last week to enter into sisterhood agreements with some towns and cities in Pangasinan (read: to campaign for the 2010 presidential election), related that the blind approached him to “complain” that he was pampering only the oldies by providing them incentives and fee movies.

“But you cannot see the pictures,” he reportedly told them. “Mayor, matalas naman ang aming pandinig,” they countered.

Yes, they will not only “see” a movie but enjoy the aircon making the theater a nice, convenient place for sleeping as some do when they enter a moviehouse. (I myself did that before during those days when local cinemahouses offer two pictures for a few pesos.)

Binay said if he wins he will do for the country on a macro scale what he had done to his city. A progressive local government unit will in turn make a progressive country, he observed. Poverty and hunger, the most common problems of the country, would be solved by curbing graft and corruption.

It might really be easy for one candidate to think of programs to solve all the country’s problems. Yet, when he is already there, he will come to realize that it is not that as easy as ABC.

But we’re willing to give them a chance to prove themselves.
We will see if Binay and the other hopefuls like Senator Manny Villar and MMDA chair Bayani Fernando, who had also earlier come to court this vote-rich province, can really do the job as required of the chief executive. We hope anybody who succeeds Gloria will not just think of himself, or his benefactors, once he comes into power.