THE MOTHER OF ALL CORRUPTION
“The mother of all corruption” is how the almost P500 Million Traffic Synchronization and Signalization Project of the Local Government Unit of General Santos City was described during the 2022 Political Campaign Period.
What was supposed to be one of the single, biggest, investments of the local government and what would have been a legacy project of the Rivera Administration was reduced to a political allegation of massive corruption during the campaign.
This project has been a very contentious issue during the campaign with allegations of massive corruption and irregularities being thrown against the then-proponent in the name of politics.
This project has been tainted with unfair and made-up allegations. So much so, that I feared that it would not come to fruition with all the assertions of irregularities ascribed to it.
Despite that, I would like to thank the administration and leadership of Mayor Lorelie Pacquiao for deciding to continue with the project.
This lends shade to the cliché that is being spun around our governance and political relationship that we are obstructionists and saboteurs against each other for political reasons at the expense of the welfare of the people of General Santos City, which is simply not true.
Our city was one of the first LGUs in the region to ever implement a traffic light system more than 20 years ago and as we all know our traffic lighting system has long fallen prey to the decay of time and is in a dilapidated state.
We cannot deny that we are long overdue for an upgrade and repair of our traffic management system.
Modernizing our traffic signalization and pairing it with a state-of-the-art Closed-Circuit Television Capability (CCTV) can help boost our security and law enforcement capabilities as well as help update our traffic control systems.
Mayor Pacquiao’s decision to continue with the Traffic Synchronization and Signalization Project is an exoneration and vindication of all allegations of corruption that were made against Mayor Ronnel Rivera.
The idea that the Pacquiao Administration is reportedly requesting that we increase the project budget by an additional P60 million to support the other components of the project is another vindication of the allegation that the project is overpriced.
Again, thank you to Mayor Pacquiao for deciding to continue with the project and putting the welfare of the people of General Santos City over the political narrative that is wrongly hung upon both of our heads.
