By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA
I told a high elective
official that I saw him with President Benigno Aquino III at the helipad of the
Virgin Milagrosa University in San Carlos City and at the residence of the
slain mayor Ernesto Balolong, Jr.
(You can accessed my earlier column, as the “first series” of this
column, “PSG Smitten by the Smoking of the President?
” at
http://wwwmortzcortigoza.blogspot.com/2014/06/psg-smitten-by-smoking-of-president.html)
:
: | BELEAGUERED: Police Regional Office 3 Director Chief Superintendent Raul Petrasanta. |
“Oo, pinatawag niya ako pero noong nandoon na
siya sa crime site (Urbiztondo town) umuwi na kami (with his body guards). Pero
tumawag ang PSG (Presidential Security Guard) hinahanap daw ako ni presidente”.
He said his convoy of
sports utility vehicles that were already near San Carlos City made a quick
u-turned for Urbiztondo. After he jumped off from his vehicle, with a body
guard covering his head with a wide umbrella as it was drizzling during that
time, rushed to the president but, an armed- to- the- teeth black garbed
members of the PSG blocked their way.
“O, saan kayo pupunta?” one
of the PSG, armed with a laser-scoped Israeli made sub machine gun confronted
them.
Before the official opened
his mouth, the commodore (general in the army) who was the commanding officer of
the PSG shouted to the PSG to allow him to enter as the president was looking
for him.
“Kaya nandoon ako katabi ni
presidente mismo habang iyong ibang V.I.Ps nasa sideline lang”
After spending some 20
minutes at the crime site, the president, the VIPs, and the curios multitudes
have left the area.
But unknown to the many,
he, the president, and Police Regional Office Director Chief Supt. Roman
A.Felix went to a sari-sari store and the president sat at the bench there,
whisked a stick of Marlboro Gold from its flip top box and puffed some smoke to
relax before going airborne in the Bell Helicopter waiting at San Carlos City.
“O bakit nawala ka kanina
doon sa crime site?” the president posed to him.
“Doon lang ako sa kabila
sir, nag yosi (smoke) rin,” he answered as he stooped with a folded arms from
where he stood to hear what the president was telling him.
Now dear readers you
probably asked me the relevance of this antics, er, column about the president
relaxing in a corner with his nicotine producing stuff.
Son of a gun, this is public interest that is
unheard by the hoi-polloi where the president went to a “gareta (variety
store)”, sat on an innocuous bench, flipped up the cover of his Gold, took a
stick and lighted it.
This can be juxtaposed
either to the human nature of the president who came from the illustrated
lineage of the Cojuangcos and Aquinos of the landed elite of Tarlac province or
as an Exhibit A of an International tobacco-control organization that smoking
cannot only be cancerous but could dragged a president, as the nicotine clouds his thoughts by committing a bind called Disbursement
Acceleration Fund or DAP.
***
It seems this one was
immaterial to others but Calasiao Chief of Police Satur Ediong and former
Malasiqui Chief of Police Abugan have left some legacy to the town folks to
cherish.
 |
| MOIST EYE FOR THE PNP's TOP POST? Criminal Investigation Detecton Group chief Director Benjamin Magalong. |
Abugan was able to solve
the perennial traffic congestion that haunted every commuters and motorists who
entered the town proper.
“What I did was to divert
away from the highway the vehicles that were bound to Dagupan City, Calasiao,
and Sta.Barbara, while allowing those bound to Bayambang, Tarlac, and Manila
inside the poblacion area,” he told me in a chance encounter at a car repair
shop in Dagupan.
Ediong told me in his
office that he studied thoroughly why there is a vehicle’s traffic bottleneck
in the market area of the burgeoning town. He said one of the causes of the
congestion was drivers of Dagupan City-San Carlos City public utility jeeps
(PUJ) habitually parked their PUJs in front of the Senior Montesoro Church.
“I asked them to leave the
place and park in a designated area to give some breathing space for traffic
in the poblacion area,”
Aside from solving if not
mitigating the traffic snarl, he trained and provided, of course with the
imprimatur of Mayor Mark Roy Macanlalay and Vice Mayor Roy Macanlalay, new
uniforms for the presently snappy Public Order & Safety Enforcer (POSO)
that primordially manned the traffic situations of the town.
Have Ediong and Abugan
really made a difference with their predecessors who since time immemorial
could not solve the traffic nuisance’s puzzle? With a smooth if not mitigated
traffic condition that these two towns enjoy I think they made an unheralded
difference.
***
‘Don’t you know that the official table you’re
using used to be the table of the general that is groomed to be the next chief
of the Philippine National Police” I told Ediong, a member of the Philippine
National Police Academy class of 1999 whose “mistahs” are Lt. Colonels Rod
Castro (the consummate mission oriented intelligence chief) and the mestizo
Jack Candelario (chief of police of Mangaldan town).
I don’t know if Ediong, a
Baguio City resident, was perturbed by my comment.
Of course he knows that I
was talking about Police Chief Supt. Raul Petrasanta, a resident of the town
and presently the regional director of police regional office 3 (PRO-3) based in
Pampanga.
I told him that the
official table and probably the official chair are the magic stuffs for going
to places, or they can be a jinx for ones career.
Jinx for the sake of the
balut vendors, jeepney drivers, and other pedestrian who gamble their time to
read this column means a person or thing that brings bad luck. .
“Don’t you know that I read
a livid conversation among the members of the Army Scout Ranger - those small units of elite Army infantry men who bring war directly to the enemy and with
“musang” (civit cat) as symbol of their patch embroidered on both of the
shoulders of their black uniform) at their Face Book Community Page,”
One of them on the internet
thread said: “Mga ka-musang gapangin na
natin itong mga mayayabang at korupt na mga pulis at gigilitan natin sila sa
le-eg”.
Ediong asked why.
I told him the Scout
Rangers really felt bad about the thousands of Russian made AK-47 imported
by Isidro Lozada, owner of a security
agency in Caraga Region, who allegedly conspired with PNP top brass that
included Petrasanta, as former head of the Firearm & Explosive Office.
“Mga ka musang, ang
pumapatay sa mga kabaro natin sa Army ay itong mga corrupt na miyembro ng PNP
na kasabwat sa pagbenta ng P55,000 na AK-47 na kumikitil sa ating mga buhay sa
field,” one of the Scout Rangers commented on the FB board.
Criminal Investigation and
Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) Director Benjamin Magalong, upper class of
Petrasanta at the PMA and perceived rival at the top police post, said at least
19 police officers could be hit with administrative and criminal charges
resulting from this.
I opined that with the
adverse media reports on the thousands of AK-47 allegedly sold to the communist
and the demolition jobs that probably
came from those generals that belong to PMA (Philippine Military Academy)
Classes of 1982 and 1983 (Petrasanta, favorite of the President Noynoy Aquino
and sister Kris) could kiss his ambition good bye”.
***
Is being a chief PNP
everything?
When Rey Velasco (police
deputy director general, PMA Class 1971 whose illustrated classmates were
Senator Gringo Honasan and Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and
Recovery Panfilo Lacson) lost in his 2010 reelection mayoralty bid by a 244
hair thin votes to veteran politician Carlito Zaplan, I asked him the
following: “Is this loss the most devastating thing that happened in your
life?”
Velasco, who has a lot of
vision for his town, pooh-poohed my query. He said he was more hurt when he did
not get the chief PNP’s plum.
Now allow me to connect
this Velasco conversation to my visit at the residence of former PNP chief Jun
Ebdane, through the intercession of his pal veteran newspaperman Jun Velasco.
In a huddle with Ebdane a day after he celebrated his bacchanalian feast as the
new governor of Zambales by defeating the well-entrenched battle scarred politician
former Governor Amor Deloso, I asked him that as a former Defense Secretary,
why the militarily poor Philippines did not purchase the used Cobra Helicopters
and Kfir jets cheaply sold by the Israeli.
After giving some of his
thoughts on my query, he asked me how’s Rey Velasco.
I told him he just lost to
Zaplan in a razor thin but Pyrrhic victory.
Broadcaster Harold Barcelona,
his friend since his PNP provincial directorship day in Pangasinan, who until
now still visit him to get some “dough”, told him that Velasco told us media
men that Ebdane’s budget for governorship was an allocation already for a
presidential election.
Ebdane was flustered.
“No love lost between me
and Rey,” he smarted.
He said he could show us
the photo copy of receipts he got from
media men and newspaper publishers in Manila Rey commissioned to demolish his
chances for the chief PNP.
“Nakasalubong ko pa sa
Malacanang si (Renato) de Villa. He chided me that as long as he is the
Executive secretary malabo
na ang chansa ko maging chief PNP”
De Villa by the way was the
patron of Velasco.
Ebdane however said that God was good to him.
“Na heart attack si de
Villa, pinalitan ni (Eduardo) Ermita (Ebdane’s patron) siya as executive
secretary”
Although Ebdane told us
some juicy and controversial story, I’d rather entertain you dear readers on
this information and nothing more I got form the horses’ mouths.
Hope you relish my stuffs
mga tsismoso he he.
(You can read my selected columns at
http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can
send comments too attotomortz@yahoo.com).
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