Huddling with DFA’s Top Guns on the Spratly’s Conundrum

 

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza, MPA

I bumped into Assistant Secretary Roberto “Bobby” Ferrer, Jr. of the Department Foreign Affairs (DFA) at the booth of Pangasinan in the International Food Expo (IFEX) held last Friday at the World Trade Center, Pasay City.

“O Bob kilala mo pa ako?”

“Siyempre si Mortz Ortigoza,” Philippines embassy in Russia former Deputy Chief of Mission and Consul General and the illustrious son of Binmaley, Pangasinan told me.

ENVOY. Undersecretary Eduardo Jose A. de Vega  (right) of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). He was once the acting Secretary of the DFA and Ambassadors to Belgium and Mexico.

I first met him when was a graduating student of Bachelor of Arts major in Political Science in 1990 when I joined the teaching staff of the Social Science Department of the present Lyceum Northwestern University in Dagupan City. He is the son of the late Pangasinan’s provincial lawmaker Roberto Ferrer, Sr.

Accompanying Ferrer was DFA Undersecretary Eduardo Jose A. de Vega who was once acting Secretary of the DFA and Ambassadors to Belgium and Mexico.

We have an animated conversation when I asked De Vega why not the Philippines military used a C-130 cargo plane to air drop provisions and repair materials to the beleaguered Marines holed in at the dilapidated navy ship's BRP Sierra Madre.

I cited to the duo how the American military delivered with success their stuffs thru low altitude parachute extraction system (LAPES) and ground proximity extraction system (GPES) at the Khe San aerial resupply mission in January 1968.

During that month the mountainous Khe San - the Dien Bien Phu’s version of the gung ho Americans – where guarded by 6,000 U.S Marines and South Vietnamese Rangers against 20, 000 armed to the teeth and blood smelling Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers. The enemies took control of the road where supplies like 1.5 million kilos of ammunition and armaments of the besieged allies passed by and six of their transport and combat helicopters and the runway had been destroyed by enemies’ artillery fires.

 “Why our military would not emulate the Americans” I posed.

“They have their own reason,” De Vega retorted as I told him about the incessant utilization of the resupply mission through civilian vessels but water cannoned by the bigger ships of the Chinese Coast Guard.

“Are our military continue to use the harassed resupply missions to put in bad light the Chinese before the bar of world’s opinion”?  I inquired.

“That’s probably the obvious reason,” the envoy answered.

I told them that incase a coast guard or a Marine die because of the dangerous maneuvering of the Chinese ships it will trigger the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) where the U.S military juggernaut comes to the succor of the lilliputian Armed Forces of the Philippines.

 De Vega nodded his head.

He has all ears when I opined that the Chinese is not yet prepared to wage war with the Americans as long as the dilemma of Malacca Strait’s choke point is not yet solved by Beijing.

The Strait is a narrow stretch of water, 500 miles long and from 40 to 155 miles wide, between the Malay Peninsula to the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the southwest, connecting the Andaman Sea and the South China Sea.

Malacca is where China’s seaborne import from the Middle East like the 10 million barrels (2019 data) per day crude oil passes to fuel her economy. Because of that the still growing People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) would not gamble to have a shooting war with the blue water navy of the United States of America especially through her nuclear subs that lurk stealthily and treacherously in the three trillion dollars a year South China Sea’s lane.

Assistant Secretary Roberto “Bobby” Ferrer, Jr. (right) of the Department Foreign Affairs (DFA).  He used to be Philippines embassy in Russia former Deputy Chief of Mission and Consul General and the illustrious son of Binmaley, Pangasinan.

I told them in that huddle that incase President Ferdinand Marcos succumbed to the pressure of threat of a coup from the military – ala Erap Estrada's presidency – and he stepped down from office because of that narcotics brouhaha with actress Maricel Soriano, the U.S government would not allow China friendly Vice President Sara Duterte – whose former president father cozied up with Beijing – to succeed as the country’s Commander-in-Chief.

“Do you remember what happened to the bachelor Presidents Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam and Salvador Allende?” I posed

“Of Chile,” Bobby retorted.

They were victims of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) inspired coup d’état where the military replaced the civilian government because Diem became abusive to the Buddhists, his dictatorial tendency, and enmeshed himself to corruption and favoritism through his younger brother and chief political adviser’s Ngo Dinh Nhu and his wife the prolifigate Madame Nhu that could prejudice the U.S war against the USSR and China through their puppets North Vietnam and the Vietcong while Allende was a Marxist that could undermine the U.S business interest in South America.

“Kalian ka maging Ambassador (When are you going to be an Ambassador)?” I asked Assistant Secretary Ferrer in the vernacular.

“Bahala na si Sir kung kelan niya gusto (It’s up to Undersecretary De Vega when he wants me to be an Ambassador) as he glanced playfully to De Vega.

“Mga after one year puede na siya maging Ambassador,” the high official bantered.

“I doffed my hat to career officials like you who rose from the rank and to your present perches compare to those presidential appointees who were generals, average thinking newsmen, politicians, and others being appointed as ambassadors where some of them did not know the nuances – mga walang alam ang mga p*tang ina! - of the mandate,” I told the amused De Vega as he and Ferrer bid goodbye to end the huddle.

Oh by the way, the amiable De Vega possesses the following credentials:  Master in National Security Administration at the National Defense College of the Philippines (2004-2005), post graduate studies in International Relation at Escuela Diplomatica de Madrid (1993-1994), and Bachelor of Laws at the University of the Philippines – Diliman (1986-1991) where he passed the Bar examination in 1991.

Damn! How can a retired Army or Police General, politician, or an average opining columnist deals with seasoned foreign diplomats without those attainments like what former acting DFA Secretary Ed de Vega can swasbuckle?

Why Prov’l Newspapers go Bankrupt?

 

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

While inside my car going for a dinner at the Niña's Café owned by the mayor-missus of billionaire businessman Cezar T. Quiambao of Bayambang, Pangasinan after the latter invited some reporters to have some sumptous chows there, seasoned writer the septuagenarian Rhee Fer Hortaleza told me that a long time publishing provincial weekly newspaper in Pangasinan has folded out.

A NEWSSTAND OWNER fixes her national and local newspapers she peddles at the sidewalk of Baguio City. Photo credit: Joseph Manzano

As a former publisher and the present Editor-in-Chief of the Northern Watch Newspaper I know like the palm of my hand the financial woes of weeklies in the gargantuan province: Printing cost  weekly that runs to eight to ten thousand pesos if the front and back are colored and it is 10 pages and the monthly salaries of the writers, errand boy, and the editor. This not to mention the P800 to P1,000 per week remuneration of the layout artist if the newspaper has eight to ten pages. The cost of production is miniscule if the newspaper has enough advertisement that runs from six thousand pesos to twelve thousand pesos per whole page – as it depends on the kind of pages (the cheaper inside page or the expensive back page) or either it’s black and white or colored printed. 

But with the advent of the internet that turned newspapering publication into website and blog like the vaunted Facebook Page -- where they expand their reach even to readers as far a Burkina Faso in Africa, Turkmenistan in Central Asia and Antartica whenever there are those Filipino diasporas and as near as Barangay Matictic in Norzagary, Bulacan and Barangays Lareg-lareg and Bakitiw in Malasiqui, Pangasinan for free --, traditional newspapering have been meeting their demise while the others are on their borrowed time as they bleed their publishers' pocket. Environmentalist however applauded the tragedy brought by the internet's technology because they save a lot of paper trees.

Legendary Baguio City's Newspaper Gone Under

Just this morning, I saw at Facebook that Baguio Midland Courier just announced that it would close shop on July 22 this year.

Excerpt:

“Your Baguio Midland Courier, after 77 years of unparalleled and credible publication by providing news and information that matter to the public, is ceasing its operation effective July 22, 2024,” statement signed by Gloria Antoinette M. Hamada, Publisher and Chief Operation Officer of Hamada Printers and Publishers Corporation and Baguio Midland Courier.

When I was growing up at the Philippines Military Academy in Baguio City at the early 1970’s, I saw my military father wielded a Baguio Midland Courier and a broadsheet whenever he arrived at our house from the city. When I worked at the public information office of the PMA in the late 1980’s, I bought too the Courier at one of the countless newsstands  - including the daily Sun Star Newspaper - when I trudged the Session Road after attending my Sunday's worship at the Evangelical Church at the then U.S military ran Camp John Hay.  I bought too at the U.S government leased military camp its military newspaper the colored Stars and Stripes before licking my ice cream in cone that tasted Stateside I bought at the ice cream parlor there for some U.S cents (of course convertible to the Philippines currency).

Why Provinical Newspapers Go South?

The predicament for local newspaper publishers why they go in the red not only on the expenses but because of the dearth of advertisers who absconded them by going to those online publication being patronized by the masa. But you wonder why there are still more than 20 newspapers in Pangasinan that still circulate –some at 200 copies only per week publication, susmariosep! - despite the economic malaise they are facing? Most of these weeklies are ubiquitous not on the newsstands of some of the 44 towns and four cities’ province but inside the offices of the judges of the municipal and regional trial courts.

These weeklies survived on the hefty payments of court petitioners who need to meet the legal requisite of a three-week publication of their Self-Adjudication with Deed of Donation, Extra-Judicial Settlement of Estate with Quit Claim, Deed of Extra Judicial Settlement of Real Property with Deed of Absolute Sale, Deed of Extra Judicial Settlement Among the Estate heirs of XYZ, to name a few.

 A four inches in width and six inches in length publication on a newspaper page cost more or less P20, 000 for a litigant who will pay the publisher in exchange for the latter to issue a signed Affidavit of Publication – of course notarized by a lawyer – to consummate the requirement.

These more than 20 weeklies – whose news items are less interesting because they’re mostly taken gratis from government propaganda offices -  agreed to get their publication from the office of the executive judge through raffles or a pro rata distribution among themselves. The problem however if there are few legal publications to be distributed and the publisher needs to pay the printing press, the reporters (but most of them in the province are not paid at all because they use the paper for P.R with politicians in a quid pro quo for some sums), and the layout artist, these give headache to the owners where some of them have closed shops even some decades ago. Those who survived until now are the publishers who owned the printing press. Some of them even owned five newspapers fronted by their dummies. A few of them told me that despite being recipient of countless of publications from the court the revenues are still not profitable enough.

“Pang prestige at power projection na lang para sa akin na malaman ng community at mga pulitiko na meron akong newspaper,” a publisher told me once. She could tap her writers and columnists to attack a government official she thinks crossed her path.

Was this foresight similar to the Taipans who bought the Philippines Daily Inquirer and the Philippines Star from their previous publishers who saw that the venture was no longer profitable?

She said that her less profitable newspaper business is offset by the other lucrative printing jobs like books and magazines contracted with her by the public - particularly the Department of Education - and private sectors.

Why Other Newspapers Survive?

Other traditional Pangasinan newspapers – like my Northern Watch Newspaper – avoided extinction because some folks – like those big time politico and trader - funded if not bought them to perpetuate their interest. My 2007 founded newspaper was funded by Abono Partylist where two of us columnists and our editor were hired as consultant and later as monthly paid workers – it means we have monthly remuneration that made us an envy of writers in other newspapers who turned green eyed upon discovering that even the payments from the court petitioners - that were tens of thousands of pesos monthly - we divide them among ourselves.  The Party even paid the printing cost of Northern Watch to advance its agenda by distributing the Watch to folks all over the province for free. The downside, however, nobody dared to buy our newspaper because it usually bannered the conceited news of Abono and they were like plague to serious readers. Our financial heydays since 2010 ended in 2020 when the lethal pandemic Corona Virus 19  ripped off the economy that our patron dropped us like hot potato.

Luckily, my businesswoman friend bought it from us in late 2020 seeing the profit she could get as Northern Watch is certified by the courts – through my tireless efforts before - to join raffles and bill the litigants who were ordered by the court to publish their concern at our paper.

“Bahala ka nang maglagay ng mga news mo diyan,” she exhorted me thus those fiery and screaming headlines being carried by the Watch that you folks could read on my blog in advance as newspaper take three days from layout, completion of the printing job, and landing at the newsstands. Publication at my three personal blogs took only some minutes for posting for all and sundry to read after I drafted my column and my reporters submit their news reports.

Online Publications get the Ads

I was amused more than a month ago when the public relation officer of SM Supermalls haggled with me for the price I billed for her principal’s regular advertisement cum P.R news not on the newspaper I edit but on its popular online version – that I still owned.

“Pero Sir lagyan niyo rin ng isang news ng SM ang newspaper niyo every week. Ang ex-deal namin kumain na lang kayo ng libre sa lahat ng stores ng SM dito sa central and northern Luzon pag andoon ako,” she said.

“Okay!” I retorted for the free meal and the compensation on the ads at my blog.

So my poser for everybody, who said that newspapering business is dead for the pocket and the tummy?

Why Ownership of Malico is High Stake for P’sinan, N. Vizcaya?

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The dispute between the provinces of Pangasinan and Nueva Vizcaya on the ownership of highly elevatated mountainous village’s Malico is high stake.

THE CLOUD KISSED verdant mountain ranges of Malico in San Nicolas, Pangasinan.

The cloud kissed verdant rolling hills pine tree smelling 1,675 meters above sea level (masl) barangay is higher than the 1,470 masl of Baguio City. Malico is a threat to be at par or eclipse Baguio because of the dilemma of the latter on the vehicular traffic congestion that Mayor Benjamin Magalong and the city council proposed a series of congestion fees as high as P250 during peak hours to discourage up to 72,000 vehicle owners to use the city streets to avoid gridlocks.

Designed and built by the American colonial government to accomodate 25,000 people, the Pine City’s population grew by 366,358 (as of the 2020 census) and its narrow roads (349 kilometers in total), could only take 145,416 individuals.

ECONOMICS BENEFITS

Malico – nearer than Baguio for tourists that hail from Manila, Regions 2 and 3 – will be a draw to people and investors.

Ownership of the village nestled on the Caraballo Mountain means hosting tourists, clubs, hotels, restaurants, golf courses, parks, and other entertainment services. Not to mention the residential areas and vacation houses that would be built there.

A ten-storey hotel means revenue for the local government units (LGUs) of Malico, her mother town San Nicolas, and Pangasinan through real property tax (as the government counts the square meters per floor of the edifice) being paid yearly and the business tax the proprietor will pay annually to the village and the town.

Other taxes that the LGUs could collect are professional, amusement, exporter, retailer, contractor, and others.

Registration of the hotel and other services to Barangay Malico, Santa Fe in the second class province of Nueva Vizcaya means the three LGUs of the first class province of Pangasinan will be deprieved of these exactions.

LINCPINS FOR THE GROWTHS OF BAGUIO AND BORACAY

These taxes continue to make Baguio City and Malay (that hosts the vaunted tourists’ draw Boracay in the world) in Aklan Province as money churning LGUs in the Philippines.

In 2023, the first class town of Malay as seen on the arguments on the bill filed by Senator Imee R. Marcos to make her as a component city in the following excerpts:

-          The town collected in 2023 P62.31 billion from tourist arrivals.

-          No. 9 among all municipalities in the Philippines in terms of local revenues by collecting P365, 723, 937.

Wikepedia says:

-           Malay has one airport known as Caticlan Airport.  The runway was extended to 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) in 2016, allowing bigger aircraft like the Airbus A320 to land at the airport.

Malay is considered the strongest economy in all the municipalities in the Region and the richest municipality of Aklan in terms of income and annual budget.

Including the national tax allotment (NTA) –the successor of the internal revenue allotment (IRA), because of Boracay the town of Malay could have an annual budget of between P600 million to P700 million this year, I surmised.

TOURISTS ARE THE SPARKPLUG FOR THE GROWTH OF AN LGU

In a lunch tendered to me at SM Center Dagupan yesterday by the two top honchos of SM Supermalls that supervised the three branches in the province of Princess Urduja, Assistant Mall Manager Michelle Charlene B. Chua told me that the highest earning branches of SM Prime Holdings yearly in Central and Northern Luzon and the Cordillera is (from highest to lowest) SM City Baguio, SM City Clark, one of the two SMs in San Fernando City, Pampanga, and SM-City Rosales in Pangasinan.

I analyzed after this conversation that even Pangasinan and San Fernando have more population than Baguio City, the SM there draw more customers because it caters to the thick pocketed tourists that flux there from all over the country.

Here are my data from Wikipedia how the local government of Baguio City benefited on the high spending tourists in the summer capital of the Philippines being threatened now by Malico that the provincial lawmaking body of Pangasinan declared as the Summer Capital of Pangasinan:

-          P2, 745, 274, 171 approved 2024 budget – or an increased of 14% from the previous year.

-          The breakdown of the budget reveals a diverse set of revenue sources, with internal sources contributing P1,196,787,000,00 (44%) and external sources accounting for P1,488,487,171.00 (54%). The remaining 2% comes from the beginning balance of P60,000,000.00. The Internal Sources consist of the Tax Revenue – P760,810,000.00 (28%) and Non-Tax Revenue – P435,977,000.00 (16%)
Meanwhile, the External Sources are the city’s shares from the National Tax Allotment – P1,234,987,171.00 (45%), Economic Zones – P250,000,000.00 (9%), and Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office – P3,500,000.00 (0%).

Oh by the way, allow me to digress a little. Because of the burgeouning number of SM patrons, Chua – a former band singer - told me that after SM City – La Union in San Fernando City is inaugurated this year, the top management of SM looks whether to construct another mall at San Carlos City in Pangasinan, San Jose City in Nueva Ecija, Tambac in Dagupan City, or add another third storey at the SM Center in Dagupan City because of the growing demands of customers.

HIGH STAKE, ANYONE?

Let’s go back to my first sentence above this column: Do you think my premise that the dispute between the gargantuan 3,163,190 (2020 census) populated Pangasinan and lilliputian 497,432 (2020 census) populated Nueva Vizcaya is really high stake?

Here’s Pangasinan Governor Ramon V. Guico III exhorting the folks of Malico when he visited them last July 3 (this author was there, too shievering in his jacket to the much colder than Baguio City’s weather of the controversial verdant village) for distribution of goodies and sums from his personal account and medical services from the provincial government:

“Well, will put an initial we allocated an initial P200 million for Malico,” he emphatically told them about the appropriation for social and medical services.

(Folks at the gym applauded)

“Pag-aagawin pa nila ang Malico (If Nueva Vizcaya wants to land grab Malico), P200 million uli! Ano game ba kayo?!”

(Folks at the gym applauded again)

The guys who did not applaud for sure are the LGU officials of Sta. Fe and the provincial government of Nueva Vizcaya.

Meeting the Tausog Lawmakers

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

When the members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) (provincial lawmaking body) of Basilan were acknowledged and honored by the SP of Pangasinan at the Capitol in Lingayen this morning during their Lakbay Aral I was beside them standing as I just arrived to see what was the agenda of the body.

“Mapia mapita (good morning)!” I hollered so the Basilan officials located at the rear part of the August Chamber could hear me.

Damn! There was no response to their faces even as some of them including their women lawmakers clad in a black burka glanced once in a while to the spectators who were located at the gallery at the right side.

Di nila siguro ako naintindihan because I used the dialect of the Maguindanaon I heard while growing up in Cotabato Province.

These guys are Tausog – the fierce warrior tribe that fought to death the Spaniards, Americans, and Marcosian soldiers many of them from Ilocoslovakia and Pangasinan.

I tried to greet them again in Arabic – the medium of instruction of the Muslims and Arabs around the world:

“Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh (Peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings),” I said.

Most of them looked at this heretic (sinner) Christian and beamed including those ladies wearing a black dress that covered their heads.

“Wa alaikum assalam (and upon you be peace),” some of them responded.

I should be crying “Allahu Akbar! (‘God is most great’!)” but I refrained lest Vice Governor Mark Lambino ordered his body guards – retired army and marine soldiers - throw me out in the Capitol for alarm and scandal or giving impression to the Christian crowd there that there was a suicide bomber standing that wanted to kill them and eventually commit suicide to get the reward of having 72 virgin- wives in heaven (Jannah) for eternal copulation because he waged a Jihad or being a shuhada (martyr) against the kuffars (nonbelievers) in Pangasinan.