NEWS: “Create free port, new legislative district in Comval”- congress bet Lopoz

By Cha Monforte

jan 7

ATTY. REX LOPOZ

COMPOSTELA VALLEY- District 2 congressional candidate Atty. Rex Lopoz (independent) is dishing out new ideas – free port in coastal towns, and creation of new legislative district in Compostela Valley which was immediately labeled as “strange” by pundits here.

Lopoz, in a phone interview yesterday, said that he has “in mind a legislation creating free port to be situated either in the coastal town of Pantukan, Mabini or Maco considering that Mindanao has no free port yet, and with it thousands if not millions of income and jobs would be miraculously created for our people.”

With it, he said, the basis is laid for the coastal district to become a special economic zone that would even serve the southern and central Mindanao and Caraga regions.

But strangely Lopoz is also proposing to gerrymander his own district where he is running for congressman, since “the three contiguous coastal towns of Maco, Mabini and Pantukan deserve to have a separate legislative district primarily owing to the sameness of their coastal characteristics and this is in support the free port. We can make this coastal district as the third district of Comval”.

The lawyer said that “the smaller second district would be composed of Nabunturan, Mawab and Laak and possibly include Montevista of the first district”.

But pundits here immediately frowned upon Lopoz ideas on the creation of the new district as “strange” saying that it would chop off into smaller turf the province’s District 2.

“While such idea can correct a geographical infirmity of making one to travel from the capital town of Nabunturan by passing first Tagum City before he reaches the coastal towns or Laak, it is strange knowing that congressmen usually want to have bigger area to get bigger slice of pork barrel,” said Romelito Juson, co-convenor of the Movement for Change in Compostela Valley.

But Lopoz laughed off the charge saying he is not afraid to serve even in a district with smallest area and smallest population, adding that “true public service knows no confines nor bounds”.

“What the people now clamor is change,” he said. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News)

Filed under: atty. rex lopoz, congressman bobong amatong, ex gov joecab caballero, mabini comval, maco comval, pantukan comval, atty. rex lopoz, bobong amatong, tata lopoz

OPINION: The year that was in Davnor and Comval

BLOGISTA
By Cha Monforte

The year that was in Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley was politically gruesome. At least it was not yet economically gruesome when gasoline price decreases had the Tagum City tricycle fares decreased twice by total of P2, and by Friday the third P1 decrease took effect, compliments from the city’s flexi-fare ordinance.

This good tiding for Tagum’s riding public isn’t however true to most of the poblaciones in the two provinces as tricycle fare remains to its early last year’s increased rates despite the many instances of gasoline decreases. Oil price volatility on the downtrend hasn’t unnerved most our local chief executives to call for fare decreases for perhaps seeing that pedicab drivers are political threats to their political career when they initiate for such.

More than ever, most if not all incumbent officials in the two provinces, in the year that was, were dreaming that riding on the Lakas boat was the best thing for their political career’s sake even if the Lakas or the purportedly merged Lakas-Kampi party is now the party much hated by the Filipinos that is almost having the image of Marcos KBL.

Wanting not to be left out of the political blue, losing Kampi bets in 2007 polls and now the out-of-office politicians were also dreaming to be like rats wanting to ride in the Lakas boat as replacements of last-termers not knowing that the Lakas and Kampi parties are now the most hated political parties for moving heaven and earth in covering the heaps of scandals and ripoffs of the Arroyo administration.

For giving a blind eye to their democratic obligation to locally oppose in Davnor and Comval, and take the cudgel of the legal opposition in the call and temper of the times, potential oppositionists wanting to ride the Lakas boat themselves buried last year democracy in this part of the country.

The politically gruesome in the year that was comes with the politics of opportunism and patronage, and the politics for one’s political career’s sake nurtured by the odorous administration parties of Lakas and Kampi, while its germination started right late last year in the making of Comval’s Lakas unity and the unstated yet standing Lakas-Kampi unification in Davao del Norte even if Governor Rodolfo del Rosario and former Congressman Antonio “Tonyboy” Floirendo Jr. could not yet see eye to eye.

But these supposedly Lakas-Kampi vassal provinces are pretentious and much more so in the coming of the year that will be when the effects of international financial crisis start to pinch on us. It has been so in 2004 and 2007 polls when Davnor and Comval voters consistently chose the opposition senatorial bets than those offered by the Palace and despite the unification of the provincial political stalwarts in 2004 and their division into Lakas and Kampi in 2007. Different dogs with the same admin collars.

In 2004, GMA lost to FPJ in overall count in Davnor, and if not of Cong. Way Kurat’s 32-0 bluffing campaign FPJ could have won in District 1 towns even if there was no party campaigning for him as he won over GMA in Maco, Mabini, Pantukan and Maragusan. It is still farcical to claim that Davnor and Comval are Lakas-Kampi Country unless they undo the placing of foremost the still jailed Senator Antonio Trillanes IV in the Top 10 tallies in both the provinces (and so with most of the present opposition senators). It was always during election year that the polarized character of the two provinces showed the true opposition majority in this part of the country, despite the latest phenomenon of massive vote-buying (and massive vote-selling).

Perhaps the year that will be when the world’s financial crunch has truly reached ashore in us, when cavendish bananas are affected- great heaven’s forbid- and when cries and hues of the people become so louder, there comes in a new politicians’ season characterized by political turncoats and butterflies, the balimbings, from what else – but the opportunistic and selfish Lakas and Kampi parties. (For online edition, visit my blog at: http://cha4t.wordpress.com, for comments and reactions, e-mail: chamonforte@yahoo.com, or txt 09069104553)

Filed under: cong. tonyboy floirendo jr., governor rodolfo del rosario, lakas kampi comval, lakas kampi davao del norte, mabini comval, maco comval, pantukan comval, cong. tonyboy floirendo jr., governor rodolfo del rosario, lakas kampi comval, lakas kampi davao del norte, mabini comval, maco comval, pantukan comval