BIRDS AND eggs. Fish, and floods, too. A brief, yet thorough, summation of all there is to Candaba. Stupendous then how the bucolic town landed in the international map of wetland sanctuaries; the yearly migration of birds bringing along myriad opportunities for trade and tourism that readily translated to the Ibon- Ebon Festival.
Ibon-Ebon so defined Candaba in the era of Mayor Jerry Pelayo – its very progenitor – that when it came to an abrupt end with his departure from the municipal hall, a cry of collective anguish and anger reverberated across Pampanga and reached even international media.
How can Candaba be ever the same again sans its signature fest? Can’t be. Won’t be. Musn’t be. Brave all brickbats thrown his way, new Mayor Rene Maglanque did. Putting to “better use” the millions of pesos allocated to the festival,
Rationalizing thus: The cost of a day of celebration is enough to sustain scores of local youth in their quest for education. It is with that mindset on education too that Maglanque deconstructed another Pelayo pet project, the Miss Earth Park, designating it as site of the Don Honorio Ventura Technical State University-Candaba Extension campus.
“Too much and for too long have our people suffered to gain access to education for their children, it’s only right we bring it to them,” Maglanque says of DHVTSU’s coming. Comes with education in man’s hierarchy of needs is health.
High though among the fear factors of LGUs is the establishment of public hospitals. Maglanque is but the second among Pampanga local executives – the first being Mexico’s once and future mayor, Teddy Tumang – not only to face but to conquer that fear.
Rising now along the main road to town is the Candaba Infirmary – with initial 20-bed capacity – slated in two years’ time to be the Candaba Community Hospital with additional wings to go full 50-bed class.
Yet one more Maglanque deconstruction – that of the urban legend, okay, rural myth that floods are boon rather than bane to Candaba, i.e. more fish to harvest, greater crop volume to reap a la post-overflowing of the Nile River.
No King Canute aspiring to keep the waters at bay, Maglanque, a civil engineer by profession, did the next best thing – prevent the isolation of villages in times of inundation with a raised road network.
Candaba is currently in the thick of roadbuilding never before seen, interconnecting the barangays of the so-called Kapampangan and Tagalog regions with the Poblacion as nexus with finished projects costing some P20 million and another P30 million on the pipeline.
A by-pass channel – planned decades ago – is now set for implementation to ease the flow of floodwaters to the Pampanga River and mitigate, if not completely eradicate flooding around the Poblacion area. At this early, Maglanque says the antiflooding infra efforts are already paying dividends.
“Puregold will start construction in April and will open in December,” the mayor told members of the Society of Pampanga Columnists in a recent forum. “Savemore of SM and Chowking are prospecting for their own sites in the town too.”
“At last, this first-class municipality will be worth its status, with all these prime labels becoming a part of the local landscape,” Maglanque beamed.
Raise the status quo at the local government, the once Transportation and Communications Asec has initiated – with the renovation and extension of the town hall at a cost of P10 million.
With its centrepiece taxpayers’ lounge, as much to keep up with as to keep the top level investors coming to town. Candaba’s strides towards commercialization are by no means a turnabout from its agricultural base.
While the watermelon industry has become veritably a tale of long ago, Maglanque says Candaba has maintained its rank as the top rice-producing municipality of Pampanga, contributing 35 percent to its annual yield.
The duck industry is as robust as ever – even without its eponymous festival – with its daily production of one million eggs supplying the balut industry of Pateros and the salted egg industry elsewhere. The odiousness of comparisons cannot be helped, at this early, between present Maglanque and past Pelayo.
Call this biased, as any opinionating is, but my take is that Pelayo aspired global attention for his town while Maglanque applied the essential for the people. Banya. It can only be for Maglanque.
