JDV on Sitio Russia in Dagupan, Putin Russia

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza, MPA

When the more than a decade photos of former five-time House Speaker Joe de Venecia (+), affectionaley called JDV, popped up on my Facebook page, it flashed back how I first met and exchanged chitchats with him one noontime in 2008 at his swanky abode in the coastal village of Barangay Bonuan Gueset while he was fanning the glowing charcoals to sear in a grill some sumptuous Dagupan bangus (milk fish).

PHOTO of the writer with Speaker Joe de Venecia (+).

This was after February 4, 2008 when he was ousted as Speaker through the gung-ho congressional allies of President Gloria Arroyo after his son Joey exposed to the public that Jose Miguel Arroyo – the hubby of La Presidenta Gloria -- brokered bribes related to a multi-million-dollar government broadband deal with China.  De Venecia corroborated the expose’ of his son and accused, too, the Arroyo administration of corruption.

“When you were at the pedestal of power I was your harsh critic but now that nobody visited you here (figures from all over the country who wanted to land in high government positions paid obeisance to the formidable politician)  because they avoid the wrath Gloria Arroyo, I come here to commiserate to your plight,” I told JDV whose eyes brightened seeing and hearing the No. 1 Attack Dog of his nemesis former Pangasinan 4^th District Congressman Benjie Lim barged to his property while waving the Olive Branch because a media pal Ronel de Vera egged him to visit the Speaker.

SITIO RUSSIA IN DAGUPAN

While De Venecia and I exchanged about the brouhahas in the South China Seas, Ronel blurted in Pangasinan: “Mr. Speaker kamusta lay so strike demad Sitio Russia ditan Bangus Processing Plant? (How’s the strike in Sitio Russia there in the Bangus Processing Plant, Mr. Speaker?)”.

The place is the Korea-Philippines Seafood Processing Complex (KP-SPC) which is a stone’s throw away at the residence of De Venecia. The KP-SPC was a U.S $2.2 million (P132 million) grant (gratis, libre, free!) Bangus Processing Plant given by the South Korean Government to the City as requested by the powerful Speaker.

De Venecia thought Ronel spoke about Russia the mammoth country thus he regaled us with those international leaders and their conundrums that he was trying to help solve.

PUTIN RUSSIA

“Russia? I was there last week in Moscow. I told President Vladimir Putin how to settle his problem with the Chechen rebels who were bombings the country,” he quipped to us.

In the 1994-1996 war, the nascent democratic capitalist Russian country under the vodka-imbibing president Boris Yeltsin sent troops to Chechnya to prevent the Muslim dominanat populace to declare their independence. The Ivans were defeated by the rebels (long before Ukraine gives headache with its armed drones to the former KGB Putin) and Chechnya became independent.

When Putin became President, he defeated Chechnya in the 1999-2009 War and thus the country fell again to the control of Moscow.

NORTH KOREA

Speaker De Venecia crowed to us that he talked with North Korea Strongman Kim Jong II (1994-2011) and South Korea President Roo Moo-hyun to settle their differences and come to the table for their unification – he was probably referring how former commie’s East Germany solved her economic plight wrought by Marxist economy after she merged with the progressive capitalist West Germany after the fall of the Iron Curtains in Eastern Europe in November 9, 1989.

PERU

“I told Peru President Alberto Fujimori how to solve his problem with the Shining Path,” he told me. The commie insurgency there was just like our New People Army (NPA) that gave anxiety and sleepless nights to the Japanese/Peruvian descent El Presidente. Fujimori served as President of the western South American country from July 28, 1990 to November 22, 2000. Pro government death squad’s Grupo Colina proliferated under this term. After a self-coup (autogolpe) – listen Filipino politicians! – Fujimori dissolved Congress and the Court and usurped all those powers and put them under the executive department – ala MacCoy Senior the father of President Bongbong Marcos. In 1995 he was elected again after he rewrote the Constitution for his term up to 2000. In 2000 he won again in a highly controversial and heavily protested election. Just months into his third term his intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos was involved in a massive corruption scandal that saw Fujimori fled Peru and exiled himself to Japan.  

COLOMBIA

He discussed to us how Colombia government settled their problem with the Marxist-Leninist rebels’ FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaries de Colombia). The rightist government and the FARC had the longest warfare in the history of Latin America. Peace came to the shore of the South America country in 2016.

GLOBETROTTING

Even outside the circle of power, the former five –time Speaker was busy globetrotting because of his founding chairmanship and being the head of the standing committee of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP). He initiated and co-founded, too, the Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council (APRC). APRC is composed of former presidents, prime ministers, and prominent thinkers—to assist with peace-building and conflict resolution.

SPUR-OF-THE-MOMENT

This lengthy column or blog was a spur-of-the-moment to Speaker Joe that I looked up because of his inimitable knowledge of world politics that I am up to present is enamored.

  I was privileged to have countless Question and Answer or Q&A in English – of course –about how China Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping told him about the sovereignty issues on the Spratlys and how England, Germany, and Norway solve the oil revenue they get at the seabed of the high seas of Norway.

“Deng Xiaoping proposed that we shall not (discuss) sovereignty for the meantime. Because if the Philippines insists sovereignty, China insists on sovereignty, Vietnam insists on sovereignty, well there will be war. So the practical step is to shelve the issue of sovereignty, and agree on one common development on the Spratly so that Vietnam, China and the Philippines that claims for oil and gas and hydrocarbons under an equity of 1/3, 1/3,1/3 profit sharing formula that eventually would have to bring in Malaysia, Brunei, whose acreage or whose claim, in the Spratlys are smaller than that of the three,” when I asked him the formula of consortium among claimant countries in the Spratly without resolving first the issue of sovereignty.

MY PAL RONEL

Did the Speaker recall Ronel’s Sitio Russia poser and give his advice how the demonstrators there and the management of the Bangus Processing Plant settle their differences? 

Naah! The quintessential Jose de Venecia and this writer were enmeshed with our geo-politics that Ronel just settled to listen, watch, and wait how those grilled sumptuous bangus and the adobo eel would be served at the dining table where the Speaker invited us too to join him with the pretty Missus Manay Gina Perez-de Venecia – the present 4^th District Congresswoman.