By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA
When I was huffing and puffing past 2 Pm of February 18
trekking the snaking stairs of the new Hotel Le Duc in Dagupan City for its 5th floor's convention hall (I ain’t know there
was an elevator there) for the press
conference of colorful and tough talking Davao City’s Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, I bumped into a former colleague at
the University who told me the mayor “spiced” his impromptu speech with the amused members of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Pangasinan Chapter with expletive's “p*tang In*” every time he cited a patent corruption issue bedeviling
the government.
Aside from the male and female lawyers there, there were
several retired generals who were mostly PMAyers, that North Cotabato's former
Governor Manny Pinol introduced to me, prominent Manila lawyers including my political law professor and former President Gloria Arroyo's counsel Raul Lambino, Dante Jiminez and his Volunteers Against Crimes
& Corruption (VACC), and the “sea” of members of the media where
many of them patiently waited for Duterte at 11 Am for the 2 Pm press
conference of that day.
“Parang ikaw pag
nagsasalita, may spiced of swearing in between your emphatic statement,” my colleague at
the academe ribbed me.
***
***
When I met Dagupan City’s Chief of Police Supt. Cris
Abrahano at the parking ground of the hotel while he supervised his police manning
the flow of the traffic for the mostly Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) of Duterte’s
entourage and guests to conveniently egress to the national highway, he told me
he has not yet heard Duterte’s speak.
Instead of citing to him the one liners of the no-nonsense
mayor at the 5th floor, I rephrased to him, that amused him, the
excerpts of the Q & A of the
editorial board of the Graphic Magazine Special Edition on Duterte that former
Governor Pinol, a town mate, gave me when I brought him the day before to Ruel
Camba’s No. 1 radio commentary program at DWPR.
Here’s how he would deal, I narrated to the 6-footer Cris, with the pathetic monthly pay of an
Army or Police general:
“Most of our military officers get a salary that is not in
keeping with dignity. Your term as general is six years, then go for three. I
will pay you. You’re a general? Then you’ll get paid P500, 000 (monthly)”
He said this could happen because after his six months to
one year running the country that would fail him under the “turtle snail and
politicized” democratic process, he would close Congress.
“As such I have the
money. I will even give you (general) extra, just to make you happy. But make
no mistake. If you make a fool out of me, I will summon you and I will hurl you
into the Pasig River”.
He cited too the shoe-string monthly salary of a rookie
policeman who receives a measly P18, 000 a month. He said the sum could not
sustain the tuition fees of his children that prompted him to immediately
borrow money after he receives his pay.
He cited as example the Special Action Force (SAF) troopers
who gallantly fight the rebels to death but thinking about what they would
leave to their families when they die.
“Patrolman, I will
give you P100,000 plus P20,000 extra for your extracurricular activities. Spend
the money for your mistress for all I care. Your children’s education will be
free from kindergarten to high school”.
But he warned:
“But if a general starts f*cking with me, I will shoot him
right in his office!”
***
I relished too reading in that article how Davao City’s
Dirty Harry would deal with the sabre-rattling Mainland China whose
encroachment at Kagitingan Reef (Fiery Cross Reef) and substantial reclamation
lately on Panganiban Reef (Mischief Reef) has cause jittery to the Philippines
and her South East Asean neighbours .
He said that his
grandfather was a Chinese.
“Should China and the
Philippines go to war, I will go to China alone, I will ask them stop their
expansion and there will be no problems. But if you keep advancing, people will
be fearful. What do you want? Shared exploration? That’s okay with me”.
“Exploration formula likes England, Germany, and Norway at
the oil rich North Sea, hmm?” I asked myself and thinking.
Would not this cause
Uncle Sam to be jittery, too, he- he- he, since its West Philippines Sea (or the
free shipping lanes South China Sea) would become a bath tub of the Sinos?
Would the jealous
American government, that wants a multilateral approached that includes the
United Nations in solving the imbroglio at the Spratlys, be affronted and
instigate instead a coup, just like what they did to arrested and assassinated
then South Vietnam Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem and the violent overthrew of
popularly elected Chile president
Salvador Allende?
But Duterte was a
fast drawer, he said if the Chinese are adamant not to be swayed on the
exploration’s compromise he espouses on Philippines’ islets like Mischief Reef
(that is 800 nautical miles from the nearest undisputed Chinese Hainan Island
and just 135 nautical miles from the nearest southeast of Palawan Island and
within the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and
keeps threatening the Philippines, his “Revolutionary Government”, will do the
following:
“You’re nearing our shores.
That being the case I will slice Palawan in half- lengthwise. I will tell the
Americans they can come here, build another Subic or Clark Airbase. Pay only
the Filipinos $1000. They can create what they want to place all their missiles
here, and then let’s fight. Whatever else can I do?”
He added he would also invite Australia whose been
expressing some interest in Palawan.
“They can all have the
coastal areas; they can build anything they like. What assures my country’s
safety is my only interest here”.
Wow, that was what I was espousing in this column since time
immemorial, bring back the U.S Bases, son of
a gun, to deter the Chinese on its arbitrary land and water grabbing
streak there!
As what the more than 3 million populated Pangasinenses would
quip in the vernacular: “Araratan (“Attaboy or “That’s my boy” in English)
Duterte!
(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com
and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at
totomortz@yahoo.com)
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