Town Engineer Deserves chide from Cojuangco

By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

A mayor told me that a Pangasinan congresswoman is to be investigated by the Ombudsman after the crime body found out that her multi-million pesos project in 2009 were fictitious.

“Nagpadala sa akin ang Ombudsman ng tao at pinakita iyong mga recipients ng seedlings in my town,” the mayor said.

DONORS. Former Congressman Mark Cojuangco (red shirt) gave P1 million for the repair of the Bayambang Central
School while SINAG President Rosendo So (extreme left) said his organization donated P400 thousand. The two were accompanied by Bayambang’stown council led by Vice Mayor Melvin Junio (5th from left). MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

According to him village chiefs in his barangays were one in saying that those names and projects did not exist when they combed their villages to identify the putative recipients.

The ghost project allegedly manipulated by the lady solon in cahoots with suspected jailed scam artist Janet Napoles.

The representative from the Ombudsman told the mayor that the ghost project was not only in his town but all over the congressional district.

***

The protesting members of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) were rambunctious at their series of rallies in front of the office of the Department of Justice. They want that Secretary Leila de Lima should be fair on handling the cases filed at the DOJ by not prioritizing the abduction charges against the threatened brass of the INC.

De Lima’s brinkmanship could either make or unmake her on her senatorial aspiration where she was between ranks 7-14 on the June’s Pulse Asia survey, just above senatorial wannabe boxing icon Manny “God Save Us” Pacquiao who was ranked 8-14.

On the somersaulting survey hungry dilemma, er, de Lima, her expediting the criminal cases could make her alienate the 1.5 million (half of the 2.5 million INC members) of the voting members of the INC but wins many of those 55,000,000 Filipino voters who hated the political interference and hubris of many members of this controversial religious affiliation where their block voting makes politicians in the country ingratiate, vulnerable, or tremble.

To the adviser of de Lima who chalked up this idea to be gung-ho versus the offended INC multitude, you’re making a polls chutzpah my friend to the once hated DOJ Secretary whose posters lauding her are everywhere in the social media.

***

Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, a presidential wannabe, has been aggressive in barnstorming the country and putting his national TV, radio, and newspaper’s daily info-mercial to shore up his pathetic surveys image.

Former Speaker Joe de Venecia told me years ago, when his son Joey ran for the 2010 Senate election, that a 30-seconder advertisement at ABS-CBN and GMA-7 ran between P200 to P300 thousand.

Moneyed politicians normally have three to five 30-seconders on each of the national TVs.

Where did Roxas get all the monies when his monthly salary is a pittance at the Department of Interior & Local Government?

First, according to Abono Party-list Chair Rosendo So, whose family owns the Toyota Display and Service Centers in the cities of Baguio and Dagupan, the 210 new modified KIA 2700 vehicles cost P1.9 million each after Roxas and the Philippine National Police purchased them and showed them to the media as the result of the “Daang Matuwid (straight path)”.

So said on his Face Book page that it was an overpriced of P740 each or P155 million to all of the cars.

Anak ng baka anong bukol ito? Hindi pa natin pinag-uusapan dito iyong big discout sa huge purchase na ito sa patrol car na may makina na ginto from the management ng KIA.

Second, when Bert Lina was plucked as the commissioner of the Bureau of Custom, many suspected that he is there to raise six billion pesos campaign funds for Roxas.

They said the honest and uncompromising former Commissioner John Sevilla resigned last April because he could no longer stand the “political nature” and continued corruption hounding the BoC while others said he was unceremoniously replaced by President Benigno Aquino III because he could not be manipulated to do the billing for Roxas’s ambition.

Lina got the goat lately of the overseas foreign workers (OFW) when he ordered that Balikbayan or OFW boxes would be subjected to random check up for taxable items.

The brouhaha against Lina had been raised to a higher decibel after Custom Deputy Commissioner Jessie Dellosa and brass of sugar planters rose raucous that 182 metric tons of smuggled sugar had entered the country since May this year at the expense of local planters and workers.

Other critics assailed Lina too of unabated smuggling of agricultural products, petroleum, and others.

Third, another source of funds for Roxas can be taken from illegal gambling game jueteng. Did I tell you before on my past column that in Pangasinan alone Meridiane (played like the illegal game jueteng) earns P5 million a day ( you can access my article at https://northwatch.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/ortigoza-p10m-bets-daily-from-gambling-in-pangasinan/).

With 81 provinces and the 17 cities and towns that composed Metro Manila in the entire country that host jueteng, Meridian, Last-2, massiao, and other illegal betting games, and each of these provinces and those in Metro Manila contributes say P500 thousand a day or P49 million for all of them, that would be a staggering P1.47 billion campaign funds a month to spike the pathetic poll stocks of Roxas in his march to the May 2016 presidential election.
 ***

When Former Congressman Mark O. Cojuangco allegedly called “bugok (idiot) Bayambang Municipal Engineeer Eddie Melicurio (Cojuangco in a media interview said he did not call him “bugok” but instead called him “palpak (incompetent) in the municipal legislative hearing), the town Mayor Ric Camacho immediately called a press conference and pounced on the former solon by saying Melicurio was humiliated by someone who is not even a resident of the town but a visitor who does not even hold any position in the government.

The terms “visitor” and “does not hold any position” hurled by Camacho against Cojuangco did not hold water.

Aside from being invited by the Parents Teachers Association’s president Filipina Alcantara, Cojuangco has not only the right to criticize but can sue Melicurio and Camacho as taxpayer of the Republic of the Philippines.

On that hearing, Cojuangco was smarting on the “sleight of hands” of Camacho and Melicurio of relocating the entire 100 years old Gabaldon type Bayambang Central School (where some of its parts were suspectedly burned in 2012) based in Barangay Poblacion to another site in Brgy.Bical because of the imagined dengue outbreak and the surge of flood to the old school every time there is heavy downpour or typhoon.

I heard the former congressman on TV saying in disbelief : “Sa siyam na taon ko na congressman at sa history ng Pilipinas ngayon lang ako nakakita ng buong escuelahan nilipat dahil sa dengue at baha!”

Earlier, Cojuangco and Abono Party list Chair Rosendo So donated  P1 million and P400 thousand, respectively, for the immediate repairs of the abandoned school.

I myself could not believed too this stupid alibi because we have a lot of public schools in flood prone Dagupan City that were under water whenever typhoon scourged them.

I myself could not believed what I saw when I first visited BCS in the Barangay Poblacion seeing it exposed to the elements and robbers who took most of the doors, ceilings, iron grills, tables, chairs, and others that made the school unusable after Camacho and Mercurio allegedly abandoned it without leaving a single security to guard it.

Were the dengue and flood scaring parts of the grand agenda because the 3.1 hectares BCS has market value (MV) of P560 million while the 2.1 hectares new site in Brgy. Bical has only an MV of P152 million?

 Camacho and Melicurio stunt are gross ignorance and grave abused of authority and act that was grossly disadvantageous to the Republic of the Philippines. They, son of a gun, are all grounds for administrative and criminal cases.

(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)