OPINION: Pencing by Mario O. Feliciano Jr.

MAYOR BENG to leave City financially sound? Our lady Mayor Beng Climaco-Salazar is making sure there’s no stoppage on her administration’s last days in office.

By next year of her 3^rd and last term as our local chief executive, she vows to have a city in safe hands whosoever takes over after her reign in office. I think she’s doing this to show her unselfishness and her deep concern for our city’s future to come under a new administration, especially the welfare and well-being of La Bella Zamboanga and the people in general.

She wants to make sure her successor whoever that be, won’t financially be in handicap, as she’s poised to leave behind a governance that’s not in the red. I don’t know, but that’s my impression.

Next year’s proposed city budget amounts to P5.5 billion, the biggest ever city budget under her three-year term administration. She’s now appealing to the Council to help her realize this, by concurring-- nay any rough-sailing.

Good luck to both our executive and legislative bodies of government, think first and foremost the people’s welfare and well-being, and the city’s future, as well. After all, that’s our mandate obliged upon us to aim for, as public-servants (voted and elected by them) to serve them back with all integrity, honesty, and competently do our duties and obligations for them alone without any self-vested interest on our part, as their public-servant leaders.

Make sure to make it happen - aimed for the greater good. Don’t play politics too much under all these circumstances that hit us all corners - let alone this seemingly endless global Covid-19 curse that strikes a blow to mankind, as if there’s no more tomorrow coming to dawn upon us. That alone makes us all quiver, and chill to the bone.

Put an end to it, though, the principle of check-and-balance remains embedded, as always, to check, as well, all the chicaneries going on in this type of system in governance of our country.

That’s all I can say, with all modesty, sans any pretense to mislead or deceive my own compueblanos en Mi Ciudad de Zamboanga. (jayfeliciano2@yahoo.com)