It is said to be the longest sea-crossing bridge in the Philippines (3.17 kilometers), but not the longest bridge (Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway, 8.9 kilometers but its sea-crossing span is only 0.39 kilometers).
Panguil Bay in northwestern Mindanao is an incongruous but scenic geographical feature. The bay is actually an elongated inlet that is 41 kilometers long with a sea depth measuring a maximum of 180 feet. The waters are said to be shark infested. That is probably because at the end of that long inlet, sedimentation is high, giving rise to a rich estuarine life. Once in the town of Lala, Lanao del Norte, friends invited me to a boating trip where we saw how the estuaries bred crab fattening culture farms.
For decades, crossing Panguil Bay between Lanao del Norte and Misamis Occidental was an exercise in frustrating fatigue. One had to take a roll-on roll-off ferry all right, but the wait in the endless queue of vehicles could take about 2-3 hours, even though the ferry ride would last for only about 15-20 minutes. It was a trip to be dreaded.
So strenuous was the sea crossing that its nearest alternative was even more exhausting – a long land trip from Aurora, Zamboanga del Sur to Bonifacio, Misamis Occidental before one reaches the two nearby cities of Tangub and Ozamiz. With the new Panguil Bay Bridge, the crossing only takes about 7 minutes from Tubod, the capital town of Lanao del Norte, to Tangub city in Misamis Occidental.
Naturally, the opening of the Panguil Bay Bridge on September 27, 2024 was welcomed with festive excitement. There was a flurry of vehicles wanting to make the historic crossing that on the initial days caused heavy traffic on the bridge.
The fanfiction part came as a sequel to the age of credit grabbing for government projects largely fueled by trollist fake news. Immediately, social media posts on the new bridge was inundated by such greetings as “Salamat PRRD,” or “Salamat Build, Build, Build of President Duterte.” “President Duterte was truly the best president,” they said.
No amount of fact-checking and correcting data could appease fans that were inventing their own fiction. Checking the sources could have established the historical facts: that the planning began in 1998 during the Estrada presidency; that nothing happened after that; that it was only in 2014 when serious discussions were made under the second Aquino presidency; that it was on that year when the board of the National Economic Development Authority approved the plans and designated the Department of Public Works and Highways as the implementing agency.
Still under the Benigno Aquino presidency was the loan signed with the Export Import Bank of Korea (Thank God it wasn’t a Red Chinese bank that required only Red Chinese workers to construct the project). That was June 10, 2016. In twenty days, Aquino would bow out of the presidency to relinquish power to Rodrigo Duterte.
And then nothing happened. It took more than two years for the Duterte presidency to break ground. That finally happened on November 27, 2018.
The day after the bridge was opened to the public, a Tiktok video circulated on September 28 captioned “Maraming Salamat FPRRD. Taxes ng taong bayan ay nakikita” (Thank you former president Rodrigo R. Duterte. The use of the public’s tax money is evident). The video had 12,400 followers, was viewed 39,600 times, and had 4,108 likes, 2,479 comments and 153 shares. As a result, the fake news mushroomed exponentially.
No one bothered to check that in fact when Duterte left office, only 12 projects of his 119 Build, Build, Build projects were completed. Even his much-touted Davao region railway (a departure from the originally planned Mindanao railway) went kaput.
As in all cases of fake news, the truth was bound to come out. And it came from an unlikely source – the former mayor of Tangub city Philip Tan who was not even a party mate of Benigno Aquino. In a post he wrote in June 2021 as a eulogy to Aquino after his death, Tan told the story behind the bridge as a first person eyewitness. That post was resurrected in the days following the opening of the Panguil Bay Bridge. I give way to Philip Tan’s account:
“I was not politically connected with President Noynoy at the start of his presidency. In 2014, Secretary Butch Abad attended a meeting of our Regional Development Council 10 and asked us to propose to national government an inter-regional project that would have an impact on our region’s economy and of course it led us to the Panguil Bay Bridge Project. We exchanged numbers and calls were made from time to time until we made it to the NEDA Investment Coordination Committee technical board.”
“One day we knew that the document was already in Malacañang for the president to sign and it was there for a week, so I asked Sec. Abad to find it in the president’s desk. That night at 11 PM, Sec. Abad was instructed by the president to inform me that he has signed the approved NEDA ICC technical board’s Panguil Bay Bridge Feasibility Study. It was another victory for the bridge after more than 30 years. Honestly we felt good and honored that night since we knew we were not politically aligned and we have not met personally.”
“So on September 9, 2015 the president visited Tangub city to present and announce his support for the PBB project.”
“By end of 2015 the national government was then working with the Korean Eximbank to finance the project. There was a lot of meetings in between and we were all pressured by time since the president’s term was about to end.”
“One day we had a problem with the loan agreement since DFA, DOF, Bangko Sentral, the National Treasury and NEDA cannot get together for the Memorandum of Agreement and we had no authority to convene the meeting.”
“By a stroke of luck on April 4, 2016 I was able to attend the ceremonial distribution of fire trucks but I really didn’t know why I was invited because Tangub had no fire truck allocation. My luck became greater when I was asked to go to the stage with the president. He asked me ‘Is there anything I can do, mayor?’ Wow what a divine providence. And so after telling him of his needed intervention, the loan agreement to finance the Panguil Bay Bridge was signed. The rest is now history.”
“To the man that we had worked with for a short period but whose legacy will forever be remembered: Daghang Salamat sa imong kaayo para sa Misamisnon (Much thanks for your goodness to the Misamisnon).”
“May your soul rest in peace.”
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
