ONLY 30 percent of the
Shophouse District at the Capital Town development in the City of San Fernando
is still open for sale.
So, press released
property titan Megaworld of its mega-project in the old site of the now
memorialized azucarera of the
Pampanga Sugar Development Company, better known as Pasudeco.
Ground has been broken at
the site to start construction.
Cited as Megaworld’s first
township development in Central and Northern Luzon, the Capital Town will host residential
condominiums, mall and
retail developments,
office towers, amphitheater, open parks and gardens, and a museum…
The head spins at the
magnitude of the development, magnified further by the compact space where it
is sited, flood-prone at that, and with but a two-lane road for access. It does
not take a prophet to foresee a traffic apocalypse there.
So, what has Mayor Edwin
“EdSa” Santiago to say – no, we are not as yet even asking what the City of San
Fernando local government will do –
in view of this impending chaos?
Serious inquiry reduced to
a rhetorical question, in all probability. As did one we raised when the
initial plans for an SM mall where once stood Essel supermarket in Barangay
Telabastagan were first publicized.
As indeed the silence of
the LGU – translating to inaction – over the traffic issue was not lost – it
played out – in the damning cries of the inconvenienced, aye, exasperated
motorists and commuters trapped in the carmaggedon that was last week’s opening
of SMTB.
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
That was the most
audaciously incredible (ir)rationalization…okay, sweet-lemoning of the traffic
disorder attendant to the mall’s debut. What has hizzoner’s kindness got to do
with this all-too-real instance of failure in proper public administration?
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
It just hit me now: that
was not the first time I heard such acclamation.
When I first ranted about
the proliferation of beggars – primarily natives of southern Philippines –
along the stretch of Jose Abad Santos Avenue in the vicinity of SM City Pampanga
and Robinsons Starmills, that was what someone ejaculated.
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
Sounding now like some
responsorial phrase in a litany of woes pervading the capital city…
Tricycles take to the
highway not only in gross violation but in utter contempt of the Department of
Interior and Local Government circular strictly prohibiting them from there…
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
Jeepneys stop and go at
will in total disregard of traffic signals, load and offload passengers where
explicitly forbidden, right in full sight of inutile traffic enforcers…
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
The downtown area
descending to street anarchy past 6:30 p.m. daily…
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
The San Fernando River,
rivulets, creeks, streams, and canals make open, stinking dumpsites and sewers…
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
A spike in crimes
not-so-petty like snatching, bukas-kotse,
akyat-bahay, motorcycle theft in the city…
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
Why, even when he comes in
two-hours late to an event – as in that recent SM-sponsored farmers’ training
program in Barangay Maimpis…
Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
Unarguably, no other local
chief executive hereabouts, gets as much reverential reference to kindness as
Mayor Edwin Santiago.
Indeed, kindness has
become him. And him, kindness.
So, I can rave all I wish
of the socio-economic and political ills besetting the city, rant all I want of
the inertia endemic in the local government, still – Maganaca ya y Mayor EdSa.
The Fernandino just
doesn’t care even if his city falls way short of its full potential for
development and stagnate. Maganaca ya y
Mayor EdSa is all that mattered.
That he ran unopposed in
his re-election bid in 2016, and stands to be lone contender for the mayorship
in 2019 anew speak as much of the political efficacy of Mayor Santiago’s
vaunted kindness as of the Fernandino’s standards for leadership which, sadly,
falls a third short of the Capampangan’s classic political profile of Anac yang maluca, mayap, at maganaca.
Mayap – good
– awanting, still…So, shall I rant more.
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