Reporters’ boo-boos on War in Mindanao

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

For my almost a year stint as radio commentator here are some bloopers I experienced with some radio reporters.

When I was discussing about a land to be donated by a brother of a mayor to the city government as situs, er, location for the new city hall, the poser to me of a reporter was hilarious, unforgivable, and unforgettable.

 ME: Ang tax sa lupa sa BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue) ay Donor, Estate, and Capital Gain Taxes.
Halimbawa may nagbigay sa iyo ng lupa at siya a sinisingil ng government, ang tawag sa tax doon ay Donor's Tax. Pag nakatangap ka noong lupa, ang tawag sa iyo ay DONEE (the tax on land being imposed by the BIR are Donor, Estate, and Capital Gain Taxes. For example somebody gave you a land and he was billed by the government, we call them as Donor’s Tax. If you’re  a recipient of that land, we call you as DONEE).

REPORTER: Iyan ba kasamang Mortz iyong DONEE ay iyong binibigay ng groom na Muslim sa parents ng bride para makasal sila? (Was that DONEE my pal Mortz the one given by a Muslim groom to the parents of the Muslim bride?)

ME: (I fell down from my seat but I have still the equanimity to answer him) Ang tawag doon ay DOWRY (We call it DOWRY).

Dowry, a noun, means a property or money brought by a groom to his wife on their marriage.
Its synonyms are marriage settlement, (marriage) portion, and archaicdot.
EXAMPLE: "Abdul Salsalani's dowry included a hectare of fertile pasture and two assault rifle Armalites to the parents of Zoraida Udtog".
The station's janitor, who was doing his stuff, was amused by the exchanges. He butted in and asked the difference of Donee and Dowry to the laundry's soap powder Downy.

What Filipinos can expect in Martial Law

                              

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

What happens after President Rodrigo R. Duterte declared at 10 pm last Tuesday Martial Law in the whole of Mindanao and its islands?

Would Duterte’s pet peeve ABS CBN TV Network, the critical Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the irritating online newsmagazine Rappler.com be banned to circulate their news, that regularly assailed the president, in the islands?

Would teenagers sporting long hair, just like those rock singers, and beard and those caught in the curfew roaming after 10 o’clock in the evening and the wee hours automatically arrested and locked up just like what Dictator Ferdinand Marcos had done in the early and middle of 1970s after he declared Martial Law in September 23, 1972?

Would this scenario I heard when I was a wide eyed child in Cotabato happened? 

This after Muslim Black Shirts’ rebels (predecessor of the Moro National Liberation Front) massacred an entire Catholic Church’s parishioners, members of the military and the dreaded Ilaga (Christian extremist paramilitary composed mostly of Ilonggos), who want to retaliate tit-for-tat the carnage, flagged every passenger of plying buses, mini-buses, and public utility jeeps and body frisked and searched their belongings for any hidden firearm and asked them the incriminatory question:

Ano ang tribu mo (What’s your tribe)?

Here were the following answers of the passengers;

Passenger A: Ilonggo ako (with a real Ilonggo accent and he was given the safety exit).

Passenger B: Cebuano ako (with a real Cebuano accent and he was given safety exit).

Passenger C: Ilocano ako (with a real Ilocano accent and he was given the safety exit).

Passenger D: Tagalog ako (with a real Tagalog accent and he was given the safety exit).

Passenger E: (A Muslim, whose name if I was not wrong was Datu Udtog Ramanam Amin, who was trembling at the rear seat of the bus retorted to the intimidating query): Tagalog ako (with a thick Muslim accent that betrays him) and he was pumped with a bullet on the head.
The same scenarios ensued in other places in Mindanao.

Cops to arrested pusher: You post bail then sell our drugs

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Recently, four member of the intelligence service of the Makati City’s Police Station were entrapped by police’s Counter-Intelligence Task Force because of robbery-extortion to two lovers whom they even kidnapped and released with the conditioned that aside from the one hundred thousand pesos they gave they have to cough- out another three hundred thousand pesos for their safety and those of their love ones.

The other day I talked with two female convicts who served time at the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong.

ROGUE. Abusive and incompetent cops in the Philippines being punished by the
 National Police Chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa. Photo Credit: Panay News

They told me they were sentenced with Paragraph 3 Section 11 of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2022.

That paragraph talks about possession of less than five grams of narcotics like shabu or methamphetamine hydrochloride.

They have the same version of that police racket in Makati City.

***

Woman A said when police barged at her house in Marikina City they found a sachet of shabu in her possession. The police told her to post bail, that run up to P400 thousand, immediately so that when they arrested another pusher with narcotics, they would take a portion of the drugs so she would be selling those stuffs while she got a percentage from it.

Hardship looms for politicos, cops as Rody wages war on "Jueteng"

 By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

When I and my co radio host dropped by recently at the mess hall of a police station of a first class town in Pangasinan, the policemen there were eating silently their lunch composed of sinigang na pork and fried galungung.

WAR ON GAMBLING: Philippine Charity Sweepstakes' Small Town Lottery

 (STL) gets more territories from Atong Ang's jueteng liked game's Jai-Alai.

 PHOTO CREDIT: ABS-CBN

Since time immemorial, these viands and their equivalents are available for FREE from breakfast to supper in the more than one hundred police personnel in this town alone.

Thanks to gambling in the province where a percentage share to the chief of police and the mayor include also the free meals and even operational funds of the financially hard up cops.

Pangasinan, a mammoth province, has 44 towns and 4 cities’ police stations.
But  President Rodrigo Duterte signed on February 2 this year Executive Order (EO) No. 13 which seeks to "intensify" the government's fight against illegal gambling.

In case the Department of Justice succeed in stopping the Meridiane Vista Gaming Corporation (MVGC) - a jueteng like number gambling game – these free meals for the police – whose lower ranked received  a government salary of P21,000 a month and its highest ranked a Superintendent, equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel in the military, got more than a hundred fifty thousand that includes his monthly salary and monthly share from gambling - would come to an end.

Can the determined Chairman Jose Jorge Corpuz and General Manager Alexander Balutan, both PMYer, of the Philippine Charity Sweepstake Office (PCSO) and the gung-ho Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aquirre stop Atong Ang’s MVGC in controlling the ten billion pesos a year number games in the country that did not pay a tax to the Bureau of Internal Revenue?

Poe should be clear if she wants to be president

By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

One of the major reasons why Senator Grace Poe was overtaken in the polls by presidential rival Rodrigo Duterte more than a month before the May 9, 2016 national election was because the feisty mayor was unequivocal that he would see dreaded drug pushers dead.

 16 million voters, gee whiz, applauded Duterte whenever he threatened in that hustling  to turn red Manila Bay with the very blood of his pet peeve the narcotics peddlers.

FLIP-FLOPPED. Then presidential rivals Rodrigo Duterte and Grace Poe were the only candidates
in the Second Presidential Debate in Cebu who raised their hands that they were for Death Penalty
in case they win the May 9, 2016 Election. Duterte won that election while Poe, an incumbent
senator, just like in her 2013 senatorial run volte-face as anti - death punishment advocate.
PHOTO CREDIT: PHILIPPINE STAR

"Manalo ako kasi because of breakdown of law and order (I will win because of the breakdown of law and order). I do not want to commit a crime but if by chance, God will place me there, magbantay kayo. Yung 1,000, magiging 100,000. Diyan mo makita tataba yung isda sa Manila Bay. Diyan ko kayo itapon (The 1,000  dead drug pushers would become 100,000. The fish at Manila Bay would go fat because I am going to feed you there)".

The crowd cheered wildly every time he repeated this pledge.
He added his vitriol with the following:

 "Pag ako ang pinagbigyan ng Diyos maupo diyan, mismo ang Diyos, iiyak yan. Tingnan mo (if God allows me to be president God will weep for what I would do to narcotics pushers)," he told a group of  applauding transport operators and drivers in Paranaque.
I saw too how the multitude in Dagupan City turned gaga whenever he declared with tongs and hammer this kind of pronouncement.
"Delikado si Grace Poe dito," I told myself in the sideline.

Poe volte-face on the death punishment.
 In 2013, as a campaign promised for her senatorial run, she told the hoi-polloi she was anti-death punishment. In the 2016 election she said she was pro-death punishment.

In my March 11, 2017 interview with her, after the Induction and Turnover Ceremonies of the JCI Dagupan Bangus Chapter in Dagupan City, she told me she was against death penalty.