Mayor Bona Requests More Cops in Mangaldan

 REQUEST ENSUED EVEN BEFORE THE 3 MURDERS

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

MANGALDAN, Pangasinan – The lady town mayor here called the police's hierarchy to add more law enforcers in the town after three killings ensued from December 2, 2023 to January 4, 2024.

The request to beef up the police here have been requested by Mayor Bona Fe D. Parayno even before Poblacion Barangay Chairwoman Melinda “Tonet” Morillo was shot to death while traversing the highway in Barangay Tebag here in December 7, 2023. 

MALEFACTOR. A suspect (extreme left) who murdered Kagawad Romeo Abrazaldo del Campo of Barangay Guilig in Mangaldan is being questioned by cops when he was arrested at a village in San Fabian after a running gun battle with the pursuing policemen.

The same request was reiterated by Parayno before Lt. Col. Roldan Cabatan, this town’s chief of police, after Brgy. Kagawad Romeo Abrazaldo del Campo of Barangay Guilig and Lina Biala Abrio of Brgy. Bantayan have been murdered last January 2, 2024 and January 4, 2024, respectively.

Parayno exhorted the law enforcers to buttress the police visibility in every village of the 30 barangays here and the incessant police patrol with the barangay security forces.

To strengthen the police visibility, the mayor bought lately two motorcycles and will buy a car to be used for roving the town to deter the criminals to pounce on hapless residents here.

Last year Parayno procured some motorcycles for the use of the same law enforcers.

 The two alleged killers of Abrio and del Campo have been arrested by the police.

 Abrio, 50, was stabbed to death at her lower side torso while riding a motorcycle in Brgy. Salay here last January 4. The male suspect is of legal age, jobless and resident here. Abrio was murdered because of a quarrel with the suspect who was a former lived in partner, investigator said. Concerned citizen rushed the wounded woman to the Region-1 Medical Center (R1MC) in Dagupan City but died while being operated there by the doctors.

While traversing in his green Honda CR-V the southern direction highway of Brgy. Salay at 11:10 pm of January 2, 2024, Kagawad del Campo was shot at his head.

He was declared dead upon arrival by the attending physician of R1MC-Annex at Bonuan Binloc in Dagupan City.

After the shooting, police operatives here had a running gun battle with the killer who was riding on a motorcycle. Upon reaching Brgy. Tempra-Guilig in San Fabian, Pangasinan, the suspect fell from his motorcycle because of a bullet wound on his thigh. He was rushed too at the R1MC in Dagupan City for treatment and eventual hospital arrest while recuperating.

Another source of this newspaper said the gunman was an employee of the Small Town Lottery (STL).

Mayor Parayno lauded the peace officers for the immediate solution of the dastardly act.

Only the two killers of former Poblacion Brgy. Chairwoman Morillo, 60, still remain scot-free. While driving her white Montero sports utility vehicle in December 7, 2023 on the stretches of Brgy. Tebag, Morillo was flagged down by the persons probably known to her before she was fatally shot several times by the gunman who was riding in tandem on a motorcycle.

Patague Hails Guv on the Hefty Revenues of the Prov. Gov’t

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza, MPA

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan – The Provincial Administrator of Pangasinan commended his governor on the flourishing tax collection last year that even elated the more or less 6,000 workers of the provincial government because of the hefty bonuses they received.

“Sa likuran po ng tahimik na pagtatrabaho ni Governor, sa likuran po ng kanyang magaling na liderato hindi po niya nakalimutan ang para po sa ating mga empleyado!” “Administrator Ely Patague’s rabble rousing remarks to the applauding and cheering employees about their bonuses at a gathering held at the oval tracks of the Narciso Ramos Sports Complex here.

VISIONARY, EFFICIENT EXECS. Pangasinan Governor Ramon V. Guico, III (left) and Provincial Administrator Ely Patague.

He cited the efficient collection in the preceding year that saw a thriving revenue for the administration of Governor Ramon V. Guico, III like the reform in the quarry operation taxes that catapulted to not less than 365 percent for the coffer based on the more than P1 million a day collection's projection.

Upon assumption into office of Guico in the second semester of 2022, the provincial legislative body approved a tax ordinance that amended the province’s 11-year-old Revenue Code and increased mineral extraction fees from P16 per cubic meter (cu.m.) to P50 per cu. m. It also imposed administrative fees ranging from P50 per cu. m. to P250 per cu. m., depending on the volume of minerals loaded on the truck and road maintenance fees ranging from P100 per cu. m. to P300 per cu. m. per truckload were collected.

Under the ordinance, 40 percent of the taxes collected will go to the barangay where the resources were extracted, 30 percent will go to the town or city, and 30 percent to the province.

During the administration of Governor Amado Espino, III, yearly collection on the quarry operation was a mere at more or less  P100 million a year when Guico succeeded him in June 31, 2022.

Cristy C. Ubando, OIC-Provincial Treasurer, disclosed that revenue collection for the first quarter of 2023 exceeded the target and had a sharp increase on quarry collection which already reached 309.20%. This, she stated, was expected to soar even higher in the last few months of 2023.

Sources of income taxes of the province come from the following: Professional Tax, Franchise Tax, Real Property Tax (Transfer Tax), Tax on Sand, Gravel & Quarry Products, Tax on Delivery Trucks and Vans, Fines and Penalties (Property Tax), Fines and Penalties (Taxes on Goods and Services).

The provincial government has a budget of P5.7 billion for this year.

Pangasinan last year was cited as Top 7 high-earning province in the country out of 81 provinces, according to the Commission on Audit.

Annual Financial Report of Local Government Units (LGUs) for the year 2022 cited Bulacan topped the list with P8,392.88 billion, followed by the provinces of Cavite- P7,916.78 billion; Ilocos Sur- P7,526.30 billion; Rizal- P7,430.79 billion; Cebu- P7,148.62; Batangas,-P6,697.54 billion; Pangasinan-P6,441.55; Laguna- P6,330.27 billion; Negros Occidental- P6,224.76; and Quezon- P6,186.98 billion.

READ MY OTHER BLOG:

It’s the U.S not the Colombians that destroyed Escobar

MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

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Basistans Welcome 2024 with Excitement, Optimism Thru Fireworks

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The people of Basista, Pangasinan welcome with excitement and optimism the year 2024 in a huge fireworks display held recently at their public municipal ground.

Pyrotechnics display in Basista, Pangasinan.

The pyrotechnics have been sponsored by the local government through the leadership of Mayor Jolly R. Resuello, the lawmaking body headed by Vice Mayor Dante P. Bustarde, departments heads, village chiefs and others.

Basista Mayor Jolly R. Resuello exhorts his constituents.

The office of the mayor was grateful too to the presence of Pangasinan 2^nd District Board Member and Lawyer Haidee S. Pacheco who witnessed the fireworks.

“Nawa'y ang taon na ito ay magdala ng kagalakan, tagumpay at mga hindi malilimutang sandali para sa lahat (Hope this new year would bring joy, success and unforgettable experiences to everyone)” the municipal official Facebook Page’s Progressibing Basista exhorted Mayor Resuello’s constituents.

Guv Guico Significant Supports to Farmers Nix Critics

 By Mortz C. Oritigoza

Records from the provincial government could prove wrong those acerbic critics from the media that the administration of Pangasinan Government Ramon V. Guico, III was insensitive to the plight of his farmers’ constituents.

Since assuming office in June 30, 2022, the governor and local officials of the huge province have been strategizing various initiatives to boost the stocks and competitiveness of farmers through medium and long-term projects.

PRIORITY. Pangasinan Governor Ramon V. Guico, III (standing) exhorts the farmers in Urbiztondo, Pangasinan on the first Farmers’ Fest of the rustic town held on December 27, 2023. The governor told them that one of the priority programs of his administration is to boost the agriculture sector in the province.

According to the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPAg) under Ms. Dalisay Moya, OPAg regularly provides technical assistance and technology transfer skills training and livelihood assistance for farmers and fishermen.

“Skills training on crops and fishery production, food processing, packaging and technologies, institutional and entrepreneurial are held to equip farmers with modern and appropriate technology and enhance their management and marketing skills preparing them to become agri-preneurs. increase production yield and income of farmers,” excerpt from the news article’s Gov. 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗼 R𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 Pledge 𝘁𝗼 A𝗴𝗿𝗶-S𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 T𝗵𝗿𝘂 M𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺, L𝗼𝗻𝗴-T𝗲𝗿𝗺 P𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 published by the Public Information Office of the Guico Administration.

It added that Guico distributed significant amount of high quality palay and corn seeds as well as other production inputs such as fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides to the farmers.

The provincial government also distributed 83 hand tractors and 10 units of axial flow pump to various farmers and fishermen associations and vegetable growers.

Not to mention the lobbies of the Guico Administration to the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) that supplied pump and engine sets to 70 associations in Pangasinan and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in June last year that gave agricultural equipment worth P42.4 million to 13,609 farmer-members from 109 agrarian reform beneficiary organizations in the province to enhance the farm mechanization in Pangasinan.

Corporate farming program, the flagship program of the governor, was introduced in the latter part of 2022, primordially to enhance Pangasinan’s food production and transform farming into a profitable economic enterprise.

Under this program are major projects to include rice production, corn production and high value crops production.

Utilizing the “convergence approach or strategy,” program partners which include private entities, were tapped to collectively address the gaps in the food value chain thru farm consolidation leading to corporate farming.

Guico is set to ink a partnership with Bounty Cares Foundation, Inc. (BCFI) for the implementation of the project which is focused on sustainable corn industry development.

Made official through a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to be signed by both parties, the BCFI, which is a non-stock and non-profit corporation, has expressed its intent to support the Pangasinan Corporate Farming Project launched by the present administration.

According to a resolution authored by provincial legislative member Nicholi Jan Louie Sison that was approved on December 4, 2023 by the august body, agriculture is the primary industry of Pangasinan thus programs and projects that redound to the benefit of the farmers are of vital importance.
Under the agreement, the BCFI will not only donate the organic fertilizer requirements of the farmer cooperators of Pangasinan Corporate Farming towards sustainable corn industry development but will likewise buy the production of the corn farmers.

Meanwhile, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was executed between the governor and the Rice-to-Rise Program of TAO Foods Company, Inc., to venture in “contract growing” with farmers’ associations; financing institutions’ resources to provide financing needs; and agricultural supplies entities’ network to supply farm inputs at minimal costs.

Initial inputs were provided to farmer cooperatives such as organic and inorganic fertilizers and pesticides and agro chemicals. Presently, there are 163 hectares that have been established with some 173 farmer-cooperatives.

 

Avenue should be Renamed to the Filipino Killer of Lawton

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

I was lately reading the 493 pages' hardbound IN OUR IMAGE: America’s Empire in Philippines by Stanley Karnow ((February 4, 1925 – January 27, 2013)) - a well-researched American writer with six Emmys, Peabody and Polk awards to boot. I was hooked with it because of the writer’s impeccable command of the English language that made me reminisce the scintillating pens of Free Press Editor Teodoro Locsin, Sr. (the take-no-prisoner writer father of Teddy Boy), Op-Ed Writer Max Soliven and former PhilStar Columnist Teodoro “Teddy Man” Benigno.

TIRRADORE DELA MUERTE (Shooter of Death). Filipino sniper Bonifacio Mariano (left photo and played by Dr. Cesar Martinez) who shot to death American Major General Henry Ware Lawton in the Battle of San Mateo, Rizal in December 19, 1899.

Karnow book was riveting because I did not encounter many of what he wrote on the 391 pages' History of the Filipino People by Teodoro A. Agoncillo when I taught Philippines History in college from years 1990 to 2002 in various universities in Dagupan and Urdaneta Cities and Metro Manila.

Here are some of the excerpts on pages 149 to 159 of Karnow’s opus for those who want to have a peek of our history during the American Colonization:

“Orphaned as a child, (Major General Henry Ware) Lawton was raised by an uncle in Indiana. He left college at the start of the Civil War to enlist in the Union forces as Private, displaying such courage that by the age of twenty-one he had soared to the rank of Brevet Colonel, with a regiment under his command,” wrote by the author who was known for his famous writings on East Asia and the Vietnam War.

Karnow added that Lawton eventually won an award-of-all-awards the Congressional Medal of Honor for a daring attack against a Confederate bastion at Atlanta. Later, he entered the prestigious Harvard Law School but soon dropped out to join the regular army as a Second Lieutenant in charge of a black infantry unit.

APACHE CHIEF GERONIMO

“A decade of monotonous garrison duty followed before he was again fighting this time against Indians. He spent ten years combing the vast and rugged West, tracking different tribes and learning their distinctive customs. The education was to serve him well when, in 1886, he accepted a new assignment”.

The Americans were out for the scalp of that famous elusive Chiricahua Apache religious and military chief Geronimo. General Nelson Miles handled the mission to Lawton - whose light cavalry pursued the Indians for the next six months - riding some two thousand miles through the Arizona territory and into Mexico.

It caught me by surprise that Lawton used a technology that could be an equivalent of our mobile phone nowadays to get intel for the whereabouts of the intrepid and evasive Apache Leader. Lawton and his men used on that time the most modern techno’s heliograph (a solar telegraph system that signals by flashes of sunlight - generally by using a Morse Code (Yes Virginia, Morse Code not Mortz Code!) - reflected by a mirror).

Lawton finally trapped and captured Geronimo in August 1886.

PHILIPPINES

“Eventually promoted to the rank of Major General, Lawton again distinguished himself in Cuba, where he was appointed military governor of Santiago following Spain’s capitulation. But his addiction to alcohol hastened his transfer home on the pretext of poor health. Detailed to a presidential trip, he attracted the attention of (U.S President William ) McKinley (Fort Bonifacio in the Philippines was named to the latter – emphasis mine), who heard of his exploits and offered him the Philippines job”.

But before packing his things to the present Pinoyland, President Mckinley – a vacillating Republican who detest first the colonization of the Philippines because unlike the European countries whose wealth came from the blood of their colonized people, the U.S had a burgeoning industrial juggernaut – privately advice Lawton to control his temperance.

“Lawton had launched his first action early in April (1898), three weeks after arriving. He drove south of Manila against the town of Santa Cruz (Manila), situated at the easternmost side of Laguna de Bay – a region razed by (General Loyd) Wheaton before. He captured the town with only a few casualties in three days, and was preparing to set up a garrison there when (Major General Elwell Stephen) Otis instructed him to withdraw. The Filipinos, who had prudently retreated in the face of the American push, thereupon reoccupied the area”.

Scorned by Otis when he told the former that he could capture Aguinaldo in sixty days, he told American journalists in Manila about Otis complacency. Lawton said that it needs one hundred thousand Yankees to attain victory in the first and only colony of the United States.

“When Lawton went to the town of San Mateo (Rizal), eighteen miles northeast of Manila, a nationalist stronghold since the outbreak of the war. Accompanied by William Dinwiddie, a correspondent for Harper’s Weekly, he rode overnight by horseback through a steady drizzle, dismounting at dawn on a bluff overlooking the site”.

The towering Lawton who sported a pith helmet (with a long yellow slicker hanging like a mandarin’s gown to his feet) made him a conspicuous target as he peered through his binocular or telescope and issued orders to his adjutants warning them to disperse to avoid enemy first.

“Soon an aide standing next to him whirled and fell, struck by a bullet. “I am afraid this isn’t a good place for a general,” Lawton remarked casually, and apologizing for leaving the line, strode across a nearby rice field, stopping from time to time to survey the scene,” Karnow wrote.

Suddenly, swatting his chest as if an insect had strung him, Lawton spat a clot of blood and muttered: “God!”

Two officers immediately rushed to his side asking him where he had been hit. “In the lungs,” he replied, then sank into their arms dead.

TIRRADORE DELA MUERTE (SHOOTER OF DEATH) BONIFACIO MARIANO

 Bonifacio Mariano, the Filipino sharpshooter who killed the decorated brave U.S two-star general, belonged to a unit commanded by a Filipino general whose surname, by coincidence susmariosep, was General Licerio Geronimo.

Geronimo was remembered in Philippine–American War annals as the general who led the truculent Filipino soldiers that defeated General Lawton and the American troops in the Battle of San Mateo in December 19, 1899.

My vigorous poser now! Who’s that nincompoop or nincompoops that sponsored a bill in Congress to make that stretches of highway at Fort Bonifacio and Nichols Field in Taguig City, Metro Manila as LAWTON AVENUE?!!!

Why name a street to a swashbuckling U.S General who killed countless of our countrymen - they called as Indios, Nigers, Gugus and other derogatory monikers - whose only desire was for independence from foreign interlopers like Spain and America?

Our Congress should rename Lawton to Mariano. Mariano shot fatally Lawton probably through a German-designed Mauser rifle ransacked by the Pinoys from the Spanish armories or those brought to Aguinaldo by thousands of Filipino auxiliary force and defectors from the Spanish Army who left hastily the withering strength of the latter against the more than 40, 000 forces of the Filipinos.

FVR Tells Ming: Thinks Big, Don’t Settle for Tupig!

 AS THE MAYOR GEARS FOR THE P200-M NEW MARKET

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

MANAOAG, Pangasinan – The looming construction of the more than two hundred million pesos modern public market here was partly influenced by the late Philippines President Fidel V. Ramos to the mayor here to think big and not settle for tupig.

Tupig is a Filipino rice cake this pilgrims’ town popularly produces. It is made from ground slightly-fermented soaked glutinous rice mixed with coconut milk, muscovado sugar and young coconut strips.

THINK BIG. Pesident Fidel V. Ramos exhorts Manaoag Mayor Jeremy "Ming" Rosario.

“O Manaoag BM (Board Member) Rosario thinks bigger! Don’t be contented with tupig! Don’t be contented with malagkit! Manaoag has a lot of potential. Think bigger your town has very big potential for trade,” Mayor Jeremy “Ming” A. Rosario cited to Northern Watch Newspaper what the Pangasinan born former president told him in a social function.

Because of his intention to snarl the big chunk of the money spends by the 56, 000 pilgrims that come here every week – the biggest tourists number in Region-1 - in the markets of the neighboring Pozorrubio and Binalonan towns after they visit every week the The Minor Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag here, the Rosario Administration intention to borrow the needed fund for the two market buildings in a hectare of land in the present public market has already been approved by the Land Bank of the Philippines.

“Wala pa iyong exact amont na talagang kukunin sa Land Bank. Hindi iyan ang elu-loan na parang facility lang iyan naka reserved diyan kung kailanganin. Land Bank is very strict hindi ibig sabihin pag P200 million ibibigay kay Mayor,” he explained the nuances how the approved P305 million allowable loan this small but first class town can contract with the LBP.

With a modern market that sells what the pilgrims needed, Rosario – a surgeon – wanted to attract even 60 to 70 percent of them to purchase their needs here before they go back to their respective homes in various parts of the country.

Rosario deplored that the old market was out of date and becomes a money pit since even half of its revenues through rentals could not even recouped the yearly spending from the public coffer.

“Nakita natin we have the worse if not the worst market place in the whole of Pangasinan. Lahat nag iimprove lahat umuutang para po maimprove pero ito po’y utang na nakikita na kayang bayaran na kikitain ng palengke,” he explained.

Thus Rosario wants to see that every stall should be installed with sub meters for power and water so his administration will be spared on paying those expenses.

“Dapat palengke self-generating. Would you believe my mga rentals diyan stalls na P360 per week per month”.

Brewing Tension Bet. the Camps of Sec. Estrella, Cong. Agabas?

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

What I liked about writing my columns on my laptop and posting them on my blogs’101 Talk Radio and P'NAN News, readers around the globe who relished the recent op-ed articles (that became viral based on the blogs’ stats) Battle Royal Looms bet. Bataoil, Kimi Cojuangco and Pincoy can Give Gina a Run for her Money (I wrote to feed the cerebral of Pangasinan readers during the long Yuletide’s holidays), eventually call me on either my Messenger or my mobile phone and give some scoops so I could further excite the blog’s followers.

Here’s one:

Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella, III (left)  and House Deputy Majority Speaker and Pangasinan 6th District Rep. Marlyn Primicias-Agabas. 

Don’t you know that there is a brewing tension between the camps of Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrad Estrella, III and Pangasinan 6^th District Cong. Marlyn Premicias-Agabas?

The cause of the riff, my source who asked on conditioned of anonymity, started when Estrella’s younger brod Cong. Robert Raymund “Eskimo” Estrella, who is the lone Representative of Abono Partylist, passed a bill in the House of Representatives to transform Pangasinan six congressional districts to eight.

(MY QUESTION: Why file a bill for an eight- district when we could have up to 12 districts based on our more than three million population by using the Constitutional barometer of not least than 250, 000 population for creating a congressional district?)

 My source said that Cong. Estrella’s bill carved out the towns of Asingan, Balungao and Rosales and Sta. Maria – both the bailiwick of the Estrellas - all from the old 6^th District for the new 7^th District that includes too the towns of Villasis and Sto. Tomas of the 5^th District.

My informer told me that the actuation of Estrella – whose brother and him have shaky alliance with 6^th District Rep. Marlyn Primicias-Agabas – offended the camp of the latter. Agabas’ hubby – a former congressman – is the incumbent Tayug Mayor Tyrone Agabas.

“Since she is a Deputy Majority Leader of the 19^th Congress, she could torpedo the bill in the committee level before it goes to the plenary for votation,” my source – an avid reader - told me when I pooh-poohed how can a lone congresswoman frustrates a bill for the welfare of the folks in Pangasinan when the 315 members of the House of Representatives resort to the popular votes and not her to catapult the bill into a law (of course with the collaboration of the Senate and the final signature of the President to make it a real law - as what our Prof taught us in Political Science).

All the optimism of Secretary Estrella - who grooms his son to run as congressman of the planned 7^th District – went to the drain, my source narrated, after learning that Rep. Agabas as Deputy Majority Leader could undermine the redistricting or congressional apportionment of the 7^th District.

The Secretary, my source cited, was preparing now his son to challenge Agabas for her reelection in case the 7^th District could not be realized before the May 2025 Election.

“Hindi maganda iyan pag naglaban iyang dalawang pamilya lalo silang magagastusan,” I quipped.

***

There was a Congressman in the mammoth province before who told another solon that they should create pronto a congressional apportionment so they would not clash for the congressional diadem in a particular district comes election time.

“Mag redistricting na tayo para hindi na tayo maglabanlaban sa election,” my solon pal quoted him for my information.

But it did not happen because two members of the House of Thieves, err, Representatives blocked the apportionment because they are threatened that some of the towns in their area would go to another district.

“So what’s the fuss if some towns go to another district?” you my dear readers would ask.

“The fuss, my Dear Watson, is less towns for their district means less national projects that cost up to one billion pesos or more a year”.

Just imagine the downside if that P1 billion or more a year project is reduced and its effect to the political stocks of the solon on the affected area.