EDITORIAL

Unstudied, incomplete commission report

THE report of the Dagupan City’s Flood Mitigation Commission came as

disappointment because it turned out merely like an executive brief that failed to
give Dagupenñ os the clear direction it promised.

What it simply did was to list options that the city can opt for to mitigate flooding
and stopped there. It did not give a timeline nor a schedule of logistics with which to
work with. How did it get to arrive a t 10-year plan as pointed out by Mayor Brian
Lim? How can these alternatives be worked out?

Mayor Lim, who alone read the report, said nothing about what the city can look
forward to year after year, and how the alternatives can cope with the worsening
impact of climate change since it appears that the commission’s report was simply
all about engineering work to be done with no specifications, designs, locations, etc..
Worse, it did not contain measured scientific results from these proposed
infrastructures but simply that these hope to mitigate flooding.

What’s more worrisome is the statement that it’s a 10-year plan, no projection of
what his administration can accomplish in the next year or so. In short, the Lim
administration will not want to be accountable for any flood mitigation plan until
the next 10 years.

But perhaps Mayor Lim has more to say when he endorses the FMC’s report to the
city council. We can’t wait to hear him.

We are the natural favorites

THE 30th SEA Games, the region’s version of the Olympics, is finally on after
confusion and a bit of chaos in the early goings. But nothing new there since
practically all past SEAG editions since its birth in 1977 were attended by similar
glitches as action approaches. As host, we are the natural favorites. The last time we
won was when he hosted it in 2015. We lost the titles as host in 1981 (third) and in
1991 (second), after miscalculations of strategies. The Games’ weird format favors
the host because the host owns the luxury of choosing which events to be played.
Thus, we flood the Games with gold-medal rich games where we are virtually sure of
victory—as in billiards, bowling, arnis, and dancesports, to cite only a few. In arnis
alone are 20 golds at stake. In dancesports 13 golds. Thus, as the local joke goes, “If
we don’t win, dinaya tayo.”

Viva Pilipinas!