Credit-grabbing Nograles duo hit

Dutertes, not Nograleses can make Davao City Mindanao’s Makati

Lawyer Karlo Nograles’ take that Davao City could surpass Makati City is aptly in the right direction.

Under the leadership of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, the city’s annual revenue was P180 million in 1988 when he first sat as mayor and could balloon to P3 billion plus by next year.

The figures from P180 million to P3 billion plus—after the mayor had served the city for nearly 20 years—are incontrovertible facts and figures about how Mayor Duterte steered the city to progress and development.

Davao City going to become a Makati City? That is not impossible.

But Karlo should not qualify this coming reality with the argument that this could not be realized if Dabawenyos would not strive more. Or elect new leaders, which is the undercurrent of his statement.

His message is that while Davao City has progressed, Dabawenyos needed a new leadership to achieve this. Is he saying this could be done if he is elected as congressman in May 2010. Is he also saying that his father, Speaker Prospero Nograles, should be the city mayor so that Davao City could become a Makati City?

Like the much-taunted signboards on every DPWH project in the city that bears the name of the Speaker and Karlo, the Nograles son’s statement seems to make it appear that Davao City’s progress lies in him in Congress and the dad holding the reins of the local government.

Simple case of credit-grabbing.

The Dutertes have been in local governance all these years. The Nograleses were into legislation, national at that, all these years and has no right whatsoever to claim they mattered when Davao City was struggling with a measly P180 million income in 1988 up to the time that it became the country’s biggest earning local government unit. More so if Nograleses propose an election promise that they could do better than the Dutertes and make the city another Makati City.

 This report was in the local papers this week:

The son and chief of staff of House Speaker Prospero Nograles sees Davao City as having the potential to surpass the living conditions of more progressive cities like Makati.

Lawyer Karlo Nograles, in the Kadayawan Sa Dabaw edition of his Saturday radio program Kalamboan Dala Tanan, said Davao City “has already achieved a lot since its post-EDSA days of ‘PU’ (small public utility cars) and rocky roads but a lot more could be achieved if Dabawenyos would strive more.”

(This is the catch. Karlo is saying na kulang pa gyod ang nahimo ni Mayor Duterte ug mga Dabawenyos)

The young Nograles said Davao City has great potential and “could even surpass living conditions in more progressive cities like Makati.”

The city of Makati has been boasting of its City College and City Hospital that give residents free education and medical care.

Karlo said his father has been making up for these needs through scholarships and assistance to Davao Medical Center (DMC).

He said to date, more than 15,000 students have benefited from the Nograles Scholarship while thousands of people have received PhilHealth cards. DMC’s facilities have also been “vastly improved,” he said.

“The Speaker is also building the first honest-to-goodness sports center in Davao City that would rise in the campus of University of Southeastern Philippines (USEP). The sports center will cost at least P60 million and could seat up to 7,000 people in air conditioned comfort,” Karlo said.

(See it? Karlo and the Speaker are now politicking, dangling scholarship grants, a hospital, a college and a sports center as if these are the only things that Dabawenyos needed.)