Treñas, Baronda bat for economic sustainability

By Herbert Vego

 

THERE is no truth to the rumor that Iloilo City’s top two politicians, Mayor Jerry Treñas and Rep. Julienne “Jam-Jam” Baronda, no longer see eye to eye. Their constituents saw them doing the rounds of malls the other day, checking if businesses were able to revive within the government-imposed health protocols.

Remember, they had run and won on the platform of leveling up the economy.

Like us, the two must have scratched their heads over the low number of shoppers at rented stalls.  Only the grocery areas appear to thrive, and that’s because housewives or their maids need to buy food.

By and large, restaurants attract less than the 50 percent allowed occupancy. It seems the shoppers are outnumbered by Grab and Panda food couriers getting their take-home orders.

What this means is that people still fear to expose themselves in public, obviously due to fear of catching coronavirus disease, better known as COVID-19.

Methinks such fear is self-defeating.  There must be more people now – including the newly jobless and the bankrupted entrepreneurs – dying of other diseases, hunger, and depression than of COVID.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has prescribed social distancing, wearing face masks, and hand-washing as the only basic steps to prevent COVID contamination. But, no thanks to excessive media play-up, we are made to believe a COVID-positive individual could infect an entire barangay.

In our panicky way of “flattening” the curve, our country seems to be succeeding in flattening the economy instead.

As of yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) had 12,164,119 total number of reported COVID cases worldwide, of which 7,030,006 had recovered and 552,023 had died.

WHO’s listed figures for the Philippines showed 50,359 cases, 12,588 recoveries and 1,314 deaths in the past five months.

What’s most obvious above is the very low mortality rate.  As I stressed in past columns, using 2017 data from the Philippine Statistics Office, more or less 1,600 Filipinos die of other causes everyday – yes, every day. It is not really surprising vis-à-vis the Philippine population, now approaching 110 million.

What have become of the remaining 36,457 COVID victims? I refer to the number resulting from total cases minus the combined recoveries and deaths. Are they recovering or dying?

Our friend Jigger Latoza wondered about that in a Facebook post.

I answered him with a joke: “They must have become zombies.”

-oOo-

How would Western Visayas congressmen vote on the issue of whether to grant a new franchise to the ABS-CBN radio-TV network?

The network being Ilonggo-owned by the Lopezes, we tend to think that  Ilonggo solons would go “yes”.

But the widespread rumor is that people very close to President Duterte are lobbying for them to vote “no” if they want “more projects” for their constituencies. Hence, even their constituents might see “wisdom” in that “blackmail.”

As to why they should “junk” the Ilonggo owners, they could simply recall that the Lopezes had not prioritized their province or city of Iloilo as favored location of their fat industries; so unlike the Gaisanos and the Gokongweis who started building from scratch in their native province of Cebu.

It’s a dilemma because our legislators’ perceived “right choice” could be politically incorrect.

The public mind already interprets the ongoing hearings by the House committee as mere “moro-moro” aimed at legitimizing a “done deal” where an alleged Chinese group would take over the network under a new corporation.

While we have no proof of that, it cannot be denied that on December 3, 2019, President Duterte threatened ABS-CBN, “Your franchise will end next year. If you expect it to be renewed, I’m sorry. I will see to it that you’re out.”

This corner believes that a “no” vote from the Ilonggo congressmen is the humane and politically correct vote. It might not swing the total votes in ABS-CBN’s favor, but it would please their constituents and make the 11,000 employees of the network keep their jobs.

We know that some of them have made up their minds, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

-oOo-

We heard Iloilo City councilor Alan Zaldivar denying a “fake news” that appeared in a local daily and at least in two Manila-based tabloids, making it appear that he had castigated MORE Power President Roel Z. Castro for the brownouts that hit Mandurriao district one night in June.

On the contrary, Zaldivar said, he had expressed gratitude to Castro for personally coming to the Sangguniang Panglunsod to explain that “corrective brownouts” had to be done on the substations to keep them viable. Otherwise, they would cease to function and plunge Iloilo into more massive darkness.

It must have boggled Zaldivar why Manila-based newspapers would run front-page banners on a story relevant only to Ilonggos.  Who could have paid for that black propaganda aimed at discrediting MORE Power?

Lawyer Romel Duron, the chair of the SP committee on franchise, has repeatedly said that that paid saboteurs must have intentionally orchestrated the city brownouts.  And so he is drafting an ordinance punishing them.

Meanwhile, Castro told this writer that while MORE Power had traced some 30,000 illegal connections done during the time of the previous power distributor, Panay Electric Company (PECO), the majority of them have not yet applied for a legitimate connection.

What is clear so far is that PECO had tolerated its unscrupulous linemen to install “jumpers” – siempre for a fee — that would divert their un-metered consumption to systems loss.