No Death Law to Plunderer: A Congressional Hypocrisy

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The nerve of these thick faced Filipino congressmen who decided to strike- off the crime of plunder (P50 million above loots) as one of the offenses in the proposed death punishment law that they would be voting by finality this coming March.

A congressman with an annual half-a- billion pesos project for his district that has more than 250 thousand population as constitutional standard could pocket up to 20 percent of S.O.P  (euphemism for cut) or one hundred million pesos through his favorite supplier or contractor say of medicines or infrastructures.

Deprived by medicine or threatened by a substandard bridge or building because the hundreds of millions of pesos budget was plundered by the solon could cause death to his constituents.

Because of this gall, the thieving members of the House of Thieves, er, Representatives could be worse than the murderer, kidnapper or narcotics seller because they could kill a few while congressmen could murder a multitude because of their avarice.

Just look how millions of marginalized and dying Filipino rice farmers are cursed to wallow into morass of poverty in their once a year harvest while their counterparts in Vietnam and Thailand enjoy twice or thrice a year harvest of palay because of their ubiquitous water systems were generously given by their public officials.

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

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

A friend reacted why the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and not the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) would declare on its intelligence report that the Bolinao town shoreline in the Philippines that faces the Chinese Mainland was not used by the notorious shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride or meth for brevity) merchant Sinos as route to dump their dangerous substance that make Filipinos “Flips” as their other moniker  and criminals to sustain their addiction with the illegal substance.

Colombian troop milled around the dead body of then world's No. 1 Drug Baron Pablo Escobar after a firefight ensued between them and Escobar and his body guard at a suburb in Medellin, Colombia in December 2, 1993.

His poser happened because of my latest article “U.S DEA clears Bolinao as drug route from China”.

My retort: “Because the DEA has not only the financial capability to do the global sleuthing about the nuances of narcotics but was concerned that the Chinese, just like the Mexicans of Drug Baron Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Columbians of Narc Lord Pablo Escobar, have been destroying the mental and physical endowments of the increasing numbers of American youth who craved to the meth and help spike looting, robbery, rape, murders in the richest country in the world"..

I told him about how the DEA, Central Intelligence Agency, and even the SEAL (Sea, Air, and Land Team) through DEVGRU (Task Force Blue (often referred to as SEAL Team Six or within JSOC as Task Force Blue ) that descended to Colombia in the late 1990s with hammer and tong after Pablo Escobar was threatened by extradition to the United States’ jail started killing 12 Supreme Court justices through the left-wing guerrillas  M-19 (yes Virginia, the Reds there unlike in our country conspired with drug barons), three presidential candidate through the sicarios (motorcycle riding hit men) and countless car bombings that killed  ten to fifteen thousand Colombians.

Basic Boxing Stances

WALK THE TALK. Basic Boxing Stances from an Anal-list, er, Anal lease, er , TV and Radio Analyst in the Philippines.

From South Paw (Manny Pacquiao's style), Orthodox, jabs, uppercuts, left and right hooks, combination, showboating, whatchamacallit son of a gun!

Who declares drug-free place no longer narc-free?

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

In my recent columns and blogs I said that the dangerous drug’s war of President Rodrigo Duterte have continued to be successful by citing those villages, towns, cities, and provinces where narcotics trade and usage have declined significantly.

11 drug suspects take 'walk of shame' in Batangas. Photo Credit: Philippine Star

Presently, a city with 32 barangays (villages) in Northern Luzon has one barangay left to be cleared to be called 100 percent drug's free.

“What if narc pushers and users returned to their old ways, who would declare those villages no longer drugs’ free,” I posed to the chiefs of police of a city and a first class town.  

 The duo told me that monitoring and revisiting those illegal drugs free villages are the measurements they are going to use to know that those villages are soiled by enterprising illegal drug pusher and returning user.

Ex-PNP Chief schools Bato how to run the police

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

“Pin-head o mahina rin ang utak nitong senator na ito,” this what I quipped after I read the Face Book’s post on the proposed death penalty bill of Senator Risa Hontiveros published by Politics.com.ph.

Hontiveros assailed the proposed death penalty passed by the House of Representatives that she and her Liberal Party’s colleague wanted to torpedo after it reached at the Senate.

TOP BRASS. From left Philippine National Police's Director General
 Ronald dela Rosa and Senator Panfilo Lacson. Photo Credit:
Meme Buster

“Death penalty is a cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment, which has a disproportionate impact on the poor and little guarantee that innocent people, would not be sentenced to death,” Hontiveros wrote and was quoted by the Liberal Party’s friendly website.



In that article, Politics.com.ph posted a poster of national hero Dr. Jose Rizal and the three activist priests Fathers Mariano Gomez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, called as Gomburza for brevity by Filipinos, who were victims of death penalty by quoting Hontiveros’ comment “simply for standing up for equal rights, freedom and democracy.”

The website titled its paraphrase of Hontiveros Face Book’s post as: “Paano kung inosente? Risa Hontiveros opposes ‘cruel’ death penalty”.

My reaction:  How could those convicted felons killed by a firing squad, lethal injection, electric chair, guillotine, or by the noose that needs only somebody to kick the stool  where the convicted criminal  stands, according to another “intellectual giant” Senator Manny Pacquiao, so  this forsaken, soft, and criminal friendly country could save for electricity when the poor convict would be given due process and free lawyer from the Public Attorney’s Office or PAO and after his conviction by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) his case would have an automatic review by the Supreme Court?

Death Penalty is justifiable than the government’s gauntlet hand policy on “shooting it out with the suspected hard core criminals” at a drop of a hat or arbitrarily extra judicially killing them.

We should get rid of this kind of death as it already reached the 6,000 mark after President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office middle of last year.

Let’s legalized execution by creating more RTCs so death would have due process.

How Jose Rizal and GomBurZa became victims because they stood “simply for standing up for equal rights, freedom and democracy” as espoused by Hontiveros, could not get my comprehension.

What kind of logic is that Politics.com.ph and Senator Hontiveros?

Dangerous drug lords whose products turned a human being into a monster like being a robber, kidnapper, or rapist who mercilessly killed their victim did not stand for equal rights, freedom, and democracy.

Winning the PH Crime War: Less robbers and drug pushers now

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Skeptics on President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on illegal drugs compared Thailand’s war on narcotics where almost 3,000 died in the First Drug War in February to April 2003 and countless died in the Second Drug War in 2005.

AUTHOR TOOK THIS PHOTO. Ricky Cornel holds affectionately the face

 of his older brother Piggie, 43, who was slain by the police in a drug 

sting operation early of July last year in Dagupan City. Ricky and Piggie 

submitted themselves a week earlier as pusher and user of shabu (meth) to the 

village chief of Bonuan Gueset and made a promissory note that they 

would avoid narcotics. Piggie, however, was caught by the police with a 

notorious pusher in a motel room selling shabu and fought out with the

police that resulted to their being shot to death.

Despite the thousands of persons  killed in Thailand and those 6000 individuals who died in legitimate police operation and those on Death Under Investigation (D.U.I)  in the Philippines war on dangerous drugs, these skeptics say Duterte’s war on narcotics is destined to fail.

But as a radio commentator and journalist who visit regularly city and town mayors and chiefs of police in the 48 cities and towns’ Pangasinan, I could say that the dangerous drugs war launched by the Duterte Administration are picking up and resulted to significant drop not only of drug pushing and using but of index crimes like theft, robbery, and other petty crimes.

In Alaminos City, Police Chief Superintendent Benjamin Ariola cited recently that only two of the 39 villages in this Western Pangasinan city are still not illegal drug free. Dagupan City’s Chief of Police Superintendent Neil Miro declared in January 12 the city as 90.2 percent after narcotics prevalent Barangay Pantal and Pogo Chico of the 31 villages’ city were publicly announced as drug free.

Good Bye, Political Cartoons

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

I just saw an ugly public official with big lips, protruding upper teeth, flat nose, big eye glasses, fat belly, and crumpled dress. Those downsides could be exaggerated on a cartoon to attract readers and amused them. But, hikbi, er, sigh, beginning last week I no longer drew an illustration for our weekly newspaper's Northern Watch .

The editor-in-chief asked me and writers to add another news article to spike the number of our news for our weekly publication. Since I drew the political caricature for our editorial because the real cartoonist left, I told her I’ll no longer make illustration since it would add more man hours for my work as columnist and  a daily radio commentator.

My 26 cartoons in a row.

For a stint of six months and two weeks, I had passionately drawn cartoons. Drawing, son of a gun, was my childhood past time!

I got the ire of my elementary and high school teachers then because when they became a bore with their teaching, I sketched at my notebooks and my parents reprimanded me when most of these teachers reported my actuation to them.

Ranan Lurie's cartoon. Lurie was the illustrator of U.S magazine's Newsweek.
He influenced' my zeal to draw since my elementary grades

"Beside, notebooks are expensive you just don't draw on them," my mother angrily told me and that was in the late 1970s and early 1980s where cheap notebooks from China ay hinde pa ata uso.