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Thursday, August 25, 2005
Mongaya: Tingting and Sandra Cam
By Anol Mongaya
Nonoy Mapula sounded amused when I called him up the other day about his and former governor Vicente de la Serna’s role in the alleged attempt to buy out Sandra Cam, the controversial witness in the Senate jueteng probe. Mapula is the administrative officer of Placer town in Masbate and Placer Mayor Vicente Cutero is a friend of Cam.
Nonoy said they merely convinced Cam not to get involved in a rightist opposition plot to oust President Arroyo. Cutero and Cam used to be with Renato de Villa’s Reporma political party. Mapula said he asked the help of de la Serna in talking Cam out of the plot. They failed.
Cam believes Malacañang was behind the effort to make her turn around. If so, then Tingting must be so close to the Palace he was given the trust to undertake such a sensitive special operation.
But Tingting is known to be with the opposition. He was a deputy executive secretary during the time of former president Erap Estrada.
In the last elections, he was with the camp of Sen. Ping Lacson, who ran for president. In the local polls, Tingting helped the beleaguered John-john Osmeña. He reportedly was instrumental in John-john’s last minute overtures to the camp of Fernando Poe Jr.
Thus, I don’t believe the accusation Tingting helped President Arroyo by offering Cam millions of pesos in ex-change for her silence.
***
It seems government officials in Cebu have found a way to handle noisy rallies of local cause-oriented groups. They simply put up loudspeakers to drown out their shouts.
But then, I think cause-oriented groups in Cebu have a long-running problem they need to solve. For some time now, their mobilizations could muster only a few hundreds. Those who join their protest actions have not grown in number despite their assessment that we are in a crisis-laden politico-economic situation.
Had mobilizations of local cause-oriented groups attracted tens of thousands, their mere number would have been louder than even a dozen loudspeakers put up at the Capitol or at the Malacañang sa Sugbo.
I think cause-oriented leaders need to sum up long and hard their experiences and learn valuable lessons. It seems they have not learned from past mistakes.
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Mayor Tomas Osmeña may have acted angry in pushing through the threat to question in court the city-hood of Talisay. But I sense that this move is an attempt to make Talisay City his scapegoat for the mismanagement of the South Reclamation Project.
Mayor Osmeña won’t accept blame for the higher taxes yet lower quality of government services in Cebu City, a situation brought about by City Hall’s shelling out millions of pesos to pay the multi-billion SRP loan. He needs Talisay as punching bag.
But I think Mayor Osmeña will soon be facing the nightmare of seeing investors come to Cebu but settle in areas other than Cebu City.
(superbalita@sunstar.com.ph or anol.blogs.friendster.com/anols_blog)
(August 25, 2005 issue)
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