DÉJÀ VU. Once upon this city, its vice mayor temporarily took the reins of city hall and left some indelible mark in its history.
From out of a bundle of yellowed, creased clippings, this one from People’s Tonight, November 4, 1988 issue, just slipped out. Serendipitously, or ominously?
ANGELES CITY – A new mayor took over city hall here Wednesday amid great expectations that he would solve the city’s multifarious problems within his month-long term.
Vice Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan took over the reins of the city government from Mayor Antonio Abad Santos who went to the United States for a series of speaking engagements representing Local Governments Secretary Luis Santos. He is expected to return after a month.
Pamintuan’s temporary elevation to the city’s top post came in the wake of his successful mediation of the protracted strike at the Holy Angel University (HAU) here, Central Luzon’s largest university with 26,000 students.
The strike which ended last October 31 lasted for 42 days.
Owing to his triumph in ending the HAU strike and on account of his immense popularity – Pamintuan had 5,000 more votes than Abad Santos’ 35,000 in the last elections – the Angelenos expect their acting mayor to “perform miracles” in cleaning the city of Typhoon Unsang’s debris as well as ridding it of the “moral filth of lewd shows, penetration movies, child prostitutes and other vices.”
In an interview with People’s Tonight shortly after he settled at the mayor’s desk, Pamintuan said his “caretaker term will be anchored on participatory government.”
“We will harness the support offered us by the non-governmental sectors in the extension of social development packages to the city residents,” Pamintuan said, adding that priority projcts would include intensified cleanliness, sanitation and immunization campaigns; the lighting of city streets, and rationalized traffic management.
“The ultimate in private sector participation in city governance will be their composition of a people’s anti-graft board which we will form immediately,” Pamintuan added.
The projected people’s anti-graft board is expected to monitor all government programs, projects and transactions, and evaluate results so as to check any occurrence of graft and corruption.
Meanwhile, a wide sector of the Angeles residents is questioning the “propriety of Abad Santos’ US visit.”
Former Mayor Francisco Nepomuceno who called the visit a “simple junket” asked why city funds amounting to P83,000 were allocated to the mayor’s trip when “the city would not directly benefit from it, the trip being undertaken in representation of Secretary Santos.”
“The local government department should have paid for Abad Santos’ expenses, not the City of Angeles,” Nepomuceno said, echoing a general sentiment arising in the city.
The former mayor has written letters to the Office of the President and the Commission on Audit asking for an investigation of the legality of the disbursement of city funds for Abad Santos’ trip. – Bong Lacson
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IN THE elections of 1992, Pamintuan’s victory in the mayoralty race permanently retired Abad Santos.
Daunting challenges posed by the devastation of the city from the twin whammies of the American abandonment of Clark Air Base and the Mount Pinatubo eruptions gave rise to a new facet of leadership in local governance.
Thus, the Agyu Tamu phenomenon was born. Thus Pamintuan’s re-election in 1995.
And, quite possibly too, his re-elevation to city hall in 2010 with the widest winning margin in city history.
Makes the mayoralty polls next year really intriguingly exciting.
