CONVENIENT SCAPEGOAT. That’s what I’ve been made of right after my initial bursts at the Pamintuan administration on its very first working day.
That is if we are to take seriously the talks that flew out of the mayor’s office and landed in the coffeeshops of SM Clark and Marquee Mall.
So I asked Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan in his first presscon as city top honcho if one character named Laquindanum held any position in his administration.
This Laquindanum is anathema to the Pampanga media after he damned them – during the 2007 election campaign yet, in his incarnation as rabid dog of Ed Panlilio – as bayaran, paid hacks, and devoid of any moral bearing.
Pamintuan replied Laquindanum was a volunteer and had no position in his administration.
For now maybe, but in the next few days?
Laquindanum will not be appointed to any position in the Pamintuan administration, was the irritated reply. I took that for NEVER. And left the presscon soon after.
Two days later, I learned that the moderator of the presscon, the putative city information officer, Deo Sambilay, was cut to pieces right after the event and demoted to deputy, the equivalent of a serf at the CIO.
Sambilay, so the story went, was castigated for his abject failure to manage the presscon, specifically his inability “to control Lacson” and those who followed up on the Laquindanum-bashing, Franco Regala of Manila Bulletin and Peter Alagos of Businessweek.
Controlling any member of media in a free forum of ideas is tantamount to suppression of press freedom. For this to issue, to be even mouthed, in the administration of Edgardo Pamintuan is a betrayal of all that Pamintuan professes, if not a total negation of his self-acclamation of being a human rights lawyer, of his self-profession as freedom fighter, of his very being as Gatdu, the bruised, bloodied but unbowed anti-Marcos militant.
Yeah, it revives credence to that branding of Pamintuan by scornful ageing activists as a queso de bola – fearless red on the outside, thoroughly yellow in the inside – not Cory yellow there but plain chicken yellow.
Nothing personal now but everything political. Four days into the Pamintuan administration, the threads that bound the Agyu Tamu team has started unraveling.
“Pamintuan’s promises are like eggs,” one re-elected councilor philosophizes, “meant to be broken.”
The councilor said a neophyte colleague has publicly announced that the mayor has given him the chairmanship of a committee that Pamintuan himself promised to the former.
So since when did the mayor do the assigning of chairs in the council committees?
“Since Pamintuan.”
And what had Vice Mayor Vicky Vega-Kabigting to say?
“Like the rest of the council, Vicky has been shut out of the Pamintuan team at city hall.”
Another councilor lamented that their very staff – routinely selected by the councilors themselves – have been chosen, not by them, but by the Pamintuan team.
“It is most ridiculous to find one executive assistant at the office of Pamintuan asking elected councilors who they were when we came a-calling,” said the councilor.
In administrations past, the veteran alderman claimed, councilors are given a number of job order placements if only to reward a few of their most ardent supporters with employment.
“Now, Pamintuan took to the very practice that he damned Mayor Blueboy with, that is his team taking all the job order positions,” he said. “We just hope and pray that these are not Pamintuan’s own army of ghost employees.”
All power at city hall rests apparently on this so-called Pamintuan team. Who’s in it?
“You don’t have to guess. The position-less Laquindanum, is one.”
Abe-abe, saup-saup. Agyu tamu.
Cow dung!
That is if we are to take seriously the talks that flew out of the mayor’s office and landed in the coffeeshops of SM Clark and Marquee Mall.
So I asked Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan in his first presscon as city top honcho if one character named Laquindanum held any position in his administration.
This Laquindanum is anathema to the Pampanga media after he damned them – during the 2007 election campaign yet, in his incarnation as rabid dog of Ed Panlilio – as bayaran, paid hacks, and devoid of any moral bearing.
Pamintuan replied Laquindanum was a volunteer and had no position in his administration.
For now maybe, but in the next few days?
Laquindanum will not be appointed to any position in the Pamintuan administration, was the irritated reply. I took that for NEVER. And left the presscon soon after.
Two days later, I learned that the moderator of the presscon, the putative city information officer, Deo Sambilay, was cut to pieces right after the event and demoted to deputy, the equivalent of a serf at the CIO.
Sambilay, so the story went, was castigated for his abject failure to manage the presscon, specifically his inability “to control Lacson” and those who followed up on the Laquindanum-bashing, Franco Regala of Manila Bulletin and Peter Alagos of Businessweek.
Controlling any member of media in a free forum of ideas is tantamount to suppression of press freedom. For this to issue, to be even mouthed, in the administration of Edgardo Pamintuan is a betrayal of all that Pamintuan professes, if not a total negation of his self-acclamation of being a human rights lawyer, of his self-profession as freedom fighter, of his very being as Gatdu, the bruised, bloodied but unbowed anti-Marcos militant.
Yeah, it revives credence to that branding of Pamintuan by scornful ageing activists as a queso de bola – fearless red on the outside, thoroughly yellow in the inside – not Cory yellow there but plain chicken yellow.
Nothing personal now but everything political. Four days into the Pamintuan administration, the threads that bound the Agyu Tamu team has started unraveling.
“Pamintuan’s promises are like eggs,” one re-elected councilor philosophizes, “meant to be broken.”
The councilor said a neophyte colleague has publicly announced that the mayor has given him the chairmanship of a committee that Pamintuan himself promised to the former.
So since when did the mayor do the assigning of chairs in the council committees?
“Since Pamintuan.”
And what had Vice Mayor Vicky Vega-Kabigting to say?
“Like the rest of the council, Vicky has been shut out of the Pamintuan team at city hall.”
Another councilor lamented that their very staff – routinely selected by the councilors themselves – have been chosen, not by them, but by the Pamintuan team.
“It is most ridiculous to find one executive assistant at the office of Pamintuan asking elected councilors who they were when we came a-calling,” said the councilor.
In administrations past, the veteran alderman claimed, councilors are given a number of job order placements if only to reward a few of their most ardent supporters with employment.
“Now, Pamintuan took to the very practice that he damned Mayor Blueboy with, that is his team taking all the job order positions,” he said. “We just hope and pray that these are not Pamintuan’s own army of ghost employees.”
All power at city hall rests apparently on this so-called Pamintuan team. Who’s in it?
“You don’t have to guess. The position-less Laquindanum, is one.”
Abe-abe, saup-saup. Agyu tamu.
Cow dung!
