SO we ask the question: Is the gun ban directed at lawless elements with guns alone or at law-abiding citizens with guns duly licensed and issued also?

If it’s the first, Governor Amado T. Espino’s directive to the policemen of Sr. Supt. Isagani Nerez, provincial police director, is hollow because being lawless and violence-prone, such gun-holders – with or without a gun ban – will always find means to have a gun at all times. What’s a gun-for-hire for if he doesn’t have a gun? Just imagining such a situation already sounds ridiculous. More so, if the governor and the police director believe that a gun ban will strike fear in the hearts of armed criminals. Quite the contrary, these people’s success at evading or thumbing their nose at the prohibition even adds to their thrill.
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HEARTWARMING how many of our overseas countrymen really go out of their way to show how much they care for us back home in these floodlands and disaster-prone areas.

Ultra-modern ambulances fully loaded with all kinds of life-saving equipment imaginable will soon be at the service of dagupenos and Malasiquinians courtesy of a Michigan-based Fil-Am nurses group who will also be coming over to conduct a medical mission this week.
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AS we’re wrapping up this week’s issue of the Pangasinan Star, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake, felt at Intensity 4 in Dagupan City, rocked the province.

It was fairly mild but enough to jog our senses to that big quake of July 16, 1990 and rekindle a brief fear about the unspeakable consequences of a Big One occurring anew in this city sitting on land geologically below sea level.

Quite significantly, we’ve been hearing the past weeks calls for better disaster preparedness in Dagupan aired by not a few of our city officials who, no doubt, were thinking more along the lines of the floods and typhoon surges along the beaches and waterlines that are common occurrences, in fact almost traditional, in our neck of the woods each year. Read the rest of this entry »

NOTHING could be more poignant in hard times than seeing and hearing government itself taking the lead in making its constituents produce food, not for anyone else’s consumption, but for their own.

A local government that puts a year-to-year vision in its programs for constituents can never go wrong. Innovating – or even copying – from other’s previous works or ideas only exposes a bankruptcy of vision and hazy, confused goals that would tell heavily on the welfare of the people it serves sooner or later.
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Wishes. Wishes. Wishes.

So, you change the calendar, maybe throw out the old doormat, dust up and discard old boxes in the house or office and perhaps too, inwardly pray or utter a fervent wish that in the new year, everything will be more peaceful, more joyous and happier than the year you’re about to leave in ten,.. nine.. eight… seven minutes and counting.

Whatever it is they say about old years and new years, the fact is we don’t often will change. It comes upon us thru a variety of factors, clusters of events, forces of circumstances. Read the rest of this entry »

WE’VE never said our thoughts for the Yuletide season so well, we believe, than in this editorial we did for last year, 2006. And so, allow us, indulge us, our reprinted reminiscence:

“ A hand extended in succor, a tear shed for the unfortunate, a prayer uttered for the lonely and helpless, a wish for peace and prosperity for others.

“These are the gestures that matter most on Christmas – and throughout the new year. Read the rest of this entry »

POOR fisherfolk of Bonuan can find great cause for rejoicing in the decision of City Hall thru Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. to cancel all tax declarations issued to individuals covering foreshorelands in the city.

This is a move long overdue since the previous city administrations to include not just the immediate past rule of Mayor Benjamin S. Lim but also that of Fernandez himself in his earlier term of office before he was plucked from the city to assume national posts one after the other under President Arroyo.
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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. Read the rest of this entry »

A SANITARY landfill, yes, the environmental need of the hour for many local government units whose dumpsite are filled or almost filled to overflowing, requires at least 12 hectares of land for it to be effective and successful.

That need alone, the land area, is already a luxury of space that a 50 square-kilometer Dagupan City can ill afford to allocate for, well, rubbish. Add to this, the cost for an ideal landfill, a staggering P150 million by the estimate of some engineers and contractors.

That should be enough to prod the environment department and other regulatory agencies to come up with other more doable solutions to the garbage problem not just in Pangasinan but throughout the country. We hear a coming environmental summit in the province intends to do just that – propose more economical and convenient solutions. Read the rest of this entry »

BAD news is good news. Correct?

Wrong.

Over the past few weeks, local newshounds and newshawks have noticed a dearth of fresh scandals unearthed on the past Lim administration by City Hall functionaries. Either that – a real, palpable absence of new brickbats to divulge or hurl on the defeated city administration – or the usual mouthpieces, notably city legal beagle and ex-judge George Mejia has finally imbibed the dictum “Discretion is the better part of valor.”

If so, good for him, and good for City Hall too. Read the rest of this entry »