Nene asks city hall to name convention center after Ambing

By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent

FORMER Cagayan de Oro mayor and Senate president Aquilino Pimentel Jr. yesterday called on city hall to seriously consider naming an unfinished convention center in Barangay Indahag after his successor, the late mayor Pablo Magtajas.

In a tribute to Magtajas, a copy of which was e-mailed to this paper yesterday, Pimentel urged the local government to name the convention and civic center “Pablo Magtajas Auditorium.”

Reads part of Pimentel’s tribute: “And even for starters alone as a gesture of our people’s gratitude, may I request the administration of Mayor Oscar Moreno to name the building that now stands atop a hill in the city, the ‘Pablo Magtajas Auditorium’ or words to that effect.”

The Indahag project, started when Pimentel was still a senator, remained unfinished to this day, something that the former Senate president had blamed on the Arroyo administration for allegedly withholding funds amounting to P240.65 million that were set aside for it from 2005 to 2007.

In his tribute entitled “God bless Ambing,” Pimentel said the late former mayor “deserves all the hallelujahs and the praises that our people in Cagayan de Oro can heap upon him as their faithful and loyal servant when he was the city’s vice mayor and eventually its mayor.”

He said words would be insufficient to describe what Magtajas did for the city and its people, crediting him for Cagayan de Oro’s emergence as northern Mindanao’s most highly urbanized city.

“He also did his best to keep its reputation as a city of love and peace among its diverse populations… Moreover, I can say without any fear of doubt that Ambing was one public servant who truly understood what public service meant: the pursuit of the weal of his constituencies, and not that of his own personal or familial welfare,” he said.

Pimentel said that on the personal level, Magtajas was “a loyal, steadfast and reliable ally who backed me up through thick and thin, and without any fear or hesitation even in the face of the dehumanizing edicts of martial law of the Marcos authoritarian rule.”

The former senator led the opposition to the administration of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos in this part of the country. Magtajas, who was his vice mayor, rose to the mayoral post when Pimentel was placed under house arrest during the Marcos dictatorship.

Pimentel said, “I can only leave to the Good Lord to repay Ambing a thousand fold for the inumerable acts of charity he did for our city and people… I pray that the Good Lord will reward Ambing with his rightful place in Paradise, and continue to bless our beloved city and people, and his family, without whom, there would have been no Ambing Magtajas, an exemplary public official, a loyal friend, and a devoted father.”