Having known Mayor Elmo Bombase for more than three decades, I am not surprised that Congressman Luis R. Villafuerte anointed him as the KAMPI official candidate for congressman in the Third District. Certainly, it was not only be- cause for the last three successive elections he trounced all his opponents put up by Congressman Noli Fuentebella in his hometown, Tigaon. He had beaten every candidate Fuentebella could think of against him and it was time to go for the jugular: put Fuentebella on his knees by beating him in the congressional race.
The scenario has become a reality with the Goliath that is Fuentebella now gnashing his teeth and flashing his sword against the David that is Bombase. Legend tells very well who prevailed.
Unless Fuentebella resorts to cheating as he was suspected to have done with Atty. Amador Simando in 1992, Mayor Bombase believes he will win. The people are tired of Fuentebella whose family claims to have ruled the Third District for 100 years and yet according to a World Bank survey 6 of the 10 poorest towns in Ca- marines Sur are in the Third District.
Why is the district saddled with this misfortune? Because politics and nothing else is Fuentebella’s supreme concern. If there are development initiatives, these are primarily designed to benefit him and his political protégées.
The Partido Development Administration (PDA), sanctuary of Fuentebella’s minions, is the most conspicuous and glaring monument of his indiscretion.
Right from the time it was established it was shrouded with scandal. The original feasibility study for the water system proposed to be funded through a loan with the Denmark International Development Agency had pegged the loanable amount at only $8 million. The NEDA technical committee increased the figure to $10 million but using his clout then with President Estrada, Congressman Fuentebella had the loan jacked up to $16 million. Where had the mysterious difference gone?
But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
At the recommended loanable amount of only $8 million, 90% of the Third District population is sup- posed to be served. Today, even if the money borrowed was doubled not even 30% of the Third District population is getting potable water supply. As result, water-borne epidemics continue unabated especially in mountain and coastal barangays that have not benefited from the PDA water system but are bound to pay the loan incurred by Fuentebella from the government of Denmark.
That is not the end of the anomaly still.
PDA has admitted that it is losing P100 million every year when it has no output to show except the water sys- tem that serves only a few barangays and for which every town in the Third District is under obligation to pay now more than P100 million as a result that highly suspicious $16 million loan.
Mayor Elmo Bombase who was one of the top development planners at the Bicol River Basin Development Program before he entered politics knows very well how Fuentebella has misled the people with his PDA. By simply making constituents understand how they have been fooled and are still being fooled and offering specific alternative development agenda genuinely designed to lift the people from perpetual poverty the David that is Bombase can easily slay Goliath.
Bombase’s chances are amplified by the fact that Fuentebella had shown no appreciable performance in his present term.
Bombase has many weapons in his arsenal.
His present focus is on P170 million supposed road rehabilitation project in the Third District, mostly along the Caramoan Peninsula Road that people suspect will go into some pockets, not to the proposed repair projects.
Imagine, even Lagonoy River is proposed to be desilted under this project. Either the government is awash with money or too stupid to have an unnecessary project as desilting of the Lagonoy River which has endangered no one.
Or perhaps, the motive is plain corruption.
