REELECTIONIST Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada on Friday belittled the announced teamup between his rival, former Mayor Alfredo Lim, and Councilor Ali Atienza, saying they were just behaving like “political butterflies that are in season now.”
“People like that are not honorable,” Estrada said a day after Lim junked his vice mayoral candidate, Rep. Benjamin Asilo, for Atienza, whose father Lito is also a former city mayor and now Buhay party-list representative.
The younger Atienza entered the race as the running mate of a third mayoral candidate, Rep. Amado Bagatsing, who has yet to make a statement on Friday about Lim’s move.
“You don’t leave your running mate. Didn’t you pledge your loyalty to him already?” Estrada said of Lim in an interview at the launch of Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center’s new eye center, where he was guest speaker.
Track record, not lies
Responding to what he called “lies” that were being spread about him, Estrada told Atienza and Lim to “change your political style” by just telling the people what they had done for the city.
“[Atienza] said I sold Quinta Market—look at that blatant lie. It is a joint-venture agreement. A public-private (sector) partnership. I will never sell any piece of public land,” Estrada said.
Lim alleged in a press conference on Thursday that Estrada beefed up his office’s intelligence fund with money supposedly allotted for the city’s six public hospitals and the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM) and Universidad de Manila (UDM). He recalled that when he left office in 2013, he had only P14 million in intelligence funds, while Estrada had around P150 million in 2014 and P200 million in 2015.
But Estrada shot back: “That’s because Manila had no money under his administration. He left the city bankrupt; now we are debt-free.”
In a statement, City Accountant Rosario Planas said, “Lim simply didn’t have enough funds to spare before for his intelligence fund.”
Planas said that based on accounting records, the annual appropriation for PLM was P315.8 million in 2013, P315.8 million in 2014, P350 million in 2015, and P400 million in 2016. UDM, on the other hand, had P224.4 million in 2013, P237.8 in 2014, P188.03 in 2015, and P194.5 in 2016.
UDM’s budget decreased in 2015 and 2016 “because the city government has already satisfied the school’s financial requirements in the preceding years,” she said.
As for the hospitals, Planas said they received over P3 billion in the last three years, on top of the P700-million “hospital modernization funds” released by Estrada from 2015 to 2016.