SOMETHING is pathetically absurd with the picture. While the City of Naga is up to its neck doing everything to make the city as pleasing, as hospitable, as vibrant and as livable as possible during the upcoming Penafrancia festivities, the provincial government of Camarines Sur continues to play the spoiled brat once again. Capitol-managed Plaza Rizal in downtown Naga as early as this month has been turned into a horrible eyesore, a tiangge of the meanest kind, that dishonors the country’s foremost hero right here in the heart of the city that traditionally plays host to the world-renowned regional fiesta.

        To think that Camarines Sur Gov. LRay Villafuerte likes to boast tourism development as his flagship project, here we see him through his moron lieutenants turning the plaza into a messy hole. As in previous years, the vandalism comes at a time that hundreds of thousands of devotees and guests are expected to troop to Naga for the largest ever Marian festival in the country.

        Is this what Gov. LRay’s much-vaunted “Go Negosyo!” promotes: a flea market for a plaza selling all kinds of counterfeit products -- from pirated CDs and VCDs to cheap lingerie? Is this how the Capitol works to shame Naga before everyone else who wouldn’t know that City Hall has nothing to do with the crime? Are these people truly Filipinos, whose allegiance to the flag must be as passionate and deep hearted as their reverence to their heroes?

        Ironically, the only thing that seems abdominally perfect in the disarrayed plaza is the governor’s giant billboard displayed thereat where he poses with no less than Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who congratulates him for being an outstanding entrepreneur. Looking like they are birds of the same feather, the duo find themselves comfortably hovering above makeshift stalls, counterfeit products and plaza tax collectors. Everyone at the plaza jostles and hustles in an orgy, nothing less, of skewed trade and commerce that unabashedly trample the hallowed ground of a great man who died for our identity and freedom.

        Meanwhile, in the more flashy landscape of the province’s CWC, people at the provincial capitol in Cadlan, Pili, Camarines Sur warmly welcome wakeboarders of different flags: Germans, Swiss, Australians, Britons, Americans, Japanese and Koreans. No problem there, for as long as the prov’l government pays the correct power bills for the lights, sounds and cables, and the fees collected are religiously remitted to the government’s coffers.

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        Due to pressing work here at home, this columnist will miss the Inter-Regional Caravan of the Department of Tourism where I was booked but couldn’t find the time as among the participants. Selected members of the tri-media, travel and tour operators and tourism officers of Regions 5 (Bicol), 8, and 13, are scheduled on a 7-day all-expenses paid inter-island tour that is aimed to link destinations among the major tourist routes of the three regions. With Bicol as jump-off point, the participants from August 9 to 15 will be traversing Regions 8 and 13 via the Pan Philippine Highway and RORO routes towards Visayas and Mindanao. On August 16, the caravan will be traveling back to visit Naga City and Camarines Sur with a lunch to be hosted by Naga City Mayor Jesse M. Robredo.

        Bicol Tourism Regional Director Nini Ravanilla is in the forefront of this novel project that complements the tourism development program of Central Philippines as highlighted by the President’s ambitious super-regions development agenda during her SONA.

        The caravan hopes to promote local tourism through information dissemination and formulation of new and affordable tour packages, particularly on the eastern seaboard that connects Bicol to Visayas and Mindanao. Though I have been to various places in the southern islands, mostly by plane, it would have been a novel experience to get there through a combination of overland and sea travel in 7 days where sponsoring travel tour operators and the DOT take care of your fare, meals, fellowships, and fun-filled stopovers.

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        Concerned government agencies, especially the DENR, the provincial government, and the municipal government, should act fast and with grave concern on the ABS-CBN Bicol Patrol report early this week about the massive mining and mineral extraction being perpetrated by a China company in a remote village in Lagonoy in the Caramoan peninsula. Unabated dynamite blasting of limestone and marble deposits, according to the residents, have brought unimaginable damage to the natural environment, including the pollution of natural waterbeds in the area. According to the local TV report, none of the concerned government offices, including the provincial and municipal governments, raised a howl of protest as the miners crack open the bowels of the otherwise pristine mountains of the peninsula. Who’s in charge? Who’s gonna pay for the pillage?