Saturday, July 16, 2005
Maxey: Indecent proposals
By Ram Maxey
Bar None
* "So, is that the kind of monkey business that certain members of the city council have been engaged in during their stint as legislators?"
I WAS rather taken aback when I read last Thursday's issue of Sun.Star Davao about the near-fistfight between two members of the City Council Tuesday afternoon at the Apo View Hotel during a meeting of several of its members.
According to the news item (a headliner, no less), councilors Diosdado "Dado" Mahipus and Ricardo Cabling had a heated exchange to the point that Mahipus, who outweighs Cabling by about 30 pounds, actually challenged the latter to fisticuffs over some snide remarks Cabling had allegedly made about certain councilors making money from people transacting business with the council.
I didn't know that the City Council has been engaged in business, i.e. involving money being transferred from one hand (outsider-businessman) to another (insider-councilor) for some favors still to be granted (as in money down first). Sort of an exchange deal. But what deal?
It so happens that earlier Tuesday the chairman of the council's committee on urban and rural housing, lawyer Victorio S. Advincula, had resigned (irrevocably, he said) as head of the committee on the heels of what he called "malicious imputations" that some members of the committee had been mulcting housing developers to expedite processing of their locational and development permits.
Advincula vehemently denied the accusations coming from certain "shadowy characters" whom he did not name but dared them to come forward and reveal just who among the committee members had been milking the developers. As of this writing they have not taken up the dare, the cowards.
Enter Councilor Emmanuel D. Galicia who replaced Advincula as committee chair. No sooner had he warmed his seat as new chair of the committee than Galicia promptly exploded his own bombshell with the admission that as head of the same committee in the previous council, he had encountered such "indecent proposals".
Meaning of course that certain councilors had insisted that they were entitled to make money out of the developers in order to recoup on their (councilors') election expenses. He could have knocked down the newsmen with a feather by his revelation of what amounts to plain and simple graft and corruption.
So, is that the kind of monkey business that certain members of the City Council have been engaged in during their stint as legislators? Naturally, Galicia refused to name names, but that is okay with me, he had already said a mouthful.
Being a man of God (as a Protestant pastor), he is not supposed to tell a lie, only the Gospel truth.
Sometimes the truth hurts.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (July 16, 2005 issue)
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