COA Commissioner takes oaths 

Of office of Mendez, Bulaga, SB 

SAN MIGUEL, Bohol. June 28 (PIA)--Former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) national director and now San Miguel Mayor Atty. Virgilio L. Mendez takes his oath of office amidst an awestruck community who marked the solemn rites as a historic day. 

No less than Commission on Audit (COA) Commissioner Atty. Michael Aguinaldo personally flew from Manila to officiate the solemn and fitting ceremonies as Mayor Mendez, Vice Mayor Bulaga Faustino Bulaga and the newly elected councilors formally assume their elected posts. 

"In the town’s history, this has so far, been the only one the people see most number of national top honchos in an inauguration of newly elected officials inside the San Miguel Gymnasium," residents said. 

Smartly dressed in custom barong tagalog, Mendez, the man whom present NBI Director Atty. Dante Gierran called as a true blooded Visayan, called all his invited friends and requested his former workmates, close guests led by NBI director Gierran, Commission on Audit (COA) central office staff, Department of Transportation Undersecretary Art Evangelista, Congressman Erico Aristotle Aumentado, NBI Regional and Provincial officials, national and local government heads along with the mayor's relatives to share the limelight on the stage, during the solemn oath-taking. 

Formerly working as among the top officials of COA, Mayor Mendez especially requested COA Commissioner Atty. Michael Aguinaldo to administer his oath, which the COA official complied: his first time to administer such to a local official. 

Mayor Mendez comes in to replace his younger sister, mayor Nunila Mendez-Pinat, who completed a decorated term of service in the town. 

Pinat distinguished herself with a leadership style borne out of years in community organizing and mobilization, while Mendez, dives into a tough and challenging mission to bring out the town’s potential and use it as a stepping stone to its dreamed development. 

The older Mendez, however is no stranger to tough times. 

Toughened by a kind of leadership honed by years of struggling to survive from an ordinary San Miguel couple: his father was a farmer and his mother: a school teacher, Mendez had to work hard and build a persistence coupled with strength of character that brought him to become a lawyer before joining the NBI in 1970. 

Assigned in Region 10 in Mindanao, going after the crime syndicates as an investigator there proved to be a stepping stone for the man to pave his ascent to greatness. 

Whetting his innate skills by getting into the renowned FBI Academy in the US, where only a handful of Filipinos have gone, Mendez peaked his hard-earned success by rising from the ranks of the NBI until he was appointed to lead the country’s top investigations bureau. 

Homing to respond to the call to serve may be a huge personal sacrifice to the disciplined man. 

After all, taking a 5th class town agricultural town by the horns and getting its reins ready for its much needed directions to inclusive development, with resources so scarce and complicated further by a community’s apathy, being a mayor here is not a task for the accomplished retiree. 

But, faced with a fight that needs a visionary leader who will pat the entire town into shape by welding an era of discipline and creativity, Mendez knows the risks. But he is willing to bring the town there. 

For his co-workers at the NBI and COA however, the task that faces Mayor Mendez is nothing compared to the innovations and the culture he brought to their offices. 

For the man credited to be the Father of a modernized NBI and the guardian of the COA, solving a problem like San Miguel might be as simple for Mendez. 

In his inaugural address, Mayor Mendez, who was supposed to read a prepared “guide,” simply slipped into an honest to goodness banter with his people: his first time to take the talk from his heart to the masses. 

In his first 100 days, he said he would work to reduce the water rates in the town. He said that San Miguel could be the most expensive water utilities, with consumers paying P100.00 for the first two cubic meters, P60, for the third cubic meter and then another ten pesos more for each cubic meter used. 

A Gawad galling Pook awardee for its municipal infirmary then, the new Mayor said among his first official acts by July would be to reorganize the Committee on Hospital, to come up with creative solutions to bring back the health services closer to the people of San Miguel. 

Then he said he would sit down with Agriculture committee and brainstorm on the issue why the town is not as productive as it should. “I don’t want to hear that were helpless here, we need to come up with solutions, whatever these are," he stressed. 

Concerned with the alarming rate of accidents in the town streets, especially those involving minors driving without licenses, he urged the town council to back him up in a measure to regulate illegal driving and minimize accidents. 

He also said he would put a premium on education, after all, he has already asked his friends to help him out in giving school bags and supplies to poor kids. His friends from Banawe in Quezon City has been helping the town out with free school bags, school supplies and classroom fixtures. 

As to infrastructure, while the town has barely enough funds to start the needed road rehabilitation and concreting especially on the San Miguel to Gabi Ubay provincial road, he assured the people he would seek the help of Congressman Erico Aristotle Aumentado to help him put up a better road. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)