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)
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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.
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MOIST EYE FOR THE PNP's TOP POST?
Criminal Investigation Detecton Group
chief Director Benjamin Magalong. |
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.
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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.
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.
