Death reasons confessed drug users, pushers yield

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

DAGUPAN CITY – The fear of death was the main reason why two former dangerous drug users submitted recently themselves to the mayor and the police here to pledge in an affidavit to forego their habit.

JUNKIES AND DOPE PEDDLERS. Self-confessed narcotics users and pushers from the “notorious” Sitio Aling Barangay  Pantal near  Arellano Street have voluntarily surrendered to Dagupan City’s OIC Chief of Police Supt. Neil O. Miro.

The “surrenderees” have been accompanied to the police station by Pantal Barangay Chairman Julie Anne Perez. PHOTO CREDIT: Dagupan City’s PNP

“Ayaw ko pang mamatay sir, user ako gumagamit lang (I don’t want to die sir. I was only a user),” quipped by 24 years old Reggie Castillo inside the mayor’s office here to Northern Watch.

He said he is unemployed after his employer in a mall did not renew his contract.

“I used to have a job where a portion of my salary I used to buy shabu to finance my drug habit”.

Castillo, just like the other self- declared drug users and pushers surrendered to the police and this city’s mayor Belen T. Fernandez, said they used shabu or meta-amphetamine hydrochloride that can be bought for P100 toP300 per sachet.

Allan, not his real name, cited that he surrendered, too, because he feared death from death squads who roamed using a motorcycle the residences of the drug suspects before they assassinate through a 45 caliber handgun their unguarded target.

“Kasi natatakot po ako,” he quipped by hiding his head using a towel as cameras of TV stations pan on the almost 50 drug personalities who submitted themselves here.

He said he came from Manaoag but lives in Barangay Bacayao here where he used to peddle clothes.

Allan said he is presently unemployed.

“It has been a long time that I did not use shabu but the village chief included me on the list so I could not do anything”.

Crime drops by 40% in this city, thanks to Drugs War

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Naysayers who pronounced that the war on drugs launched by President Rodrigo Duterte is destined to fail, just like in Thailand, had just been rebutted by a battle scared senior non-commissioned police officer whose equivalent rank  in the military is master sergeant.

In an interview with him, he told me that not only peddling of illegal drugs in Urdaneta City, Pangasinan – known as one of the top bailiwicks of narcotics peddlers in my province, had dropped but three of its 34 villages have been declared as illegal drugs -free.

Urdaneta City Mayor Amadeo "Bobom" G.E. Perez IV excitedly told me that these dope free villages are Cabaruan, Otama, and Tipuso.

“You go to Superintendent Marcelino Desamito and asked him for more details on these three barangays,” Perez told me and his favorite media man, who drops by at his office weekly, Harold Barcelona.

Instead of Desamito, who was busy talking with some Muslim elders, we faced the police “sergeant major”  who said index crimes like robbery, theft, and others decreased by 40 percent because of the war on drugs.

“Iyong akyat bahay itong tag-ulan marami. Parang seasonal iyan e ngayon wala na.  

Wala kaming street crimes. Iyong snatching ng cellphones wala na. Tapos iyong riding-in –tandem na lupa, property ang dahilan ng patayan wala na iyan".

He suspected that those hire guns were those who were hooked on drugs. But because of the aggressive approached by the government on drugs’ traders the menace of drugs have been disrupted.

“Saka sa gabi pag patrol ka madali ang magsita kasi makikita mo hinde gaya noon na maraming pang tao sa 9 pm”.

He agreed to me that the aggressive war launched by Duterte, who already saw countless dead suspected dope peddlers and junkies, have been ubiquitous to bear fruits in all cities and towns in the country.

So who now says the drug war is a failure?

I was telling my radio listeners that the scorched earth approached by the Duterte Administration is the most effective weapon the pushers understand.

“Due process is not applicable in this country. Many drug traders could bribe in their favor susceptible policemen, prosecutors, judges and this happen since time immemorial,” I quipped.

Duterte’s political jujitsu between China and Japan

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Had the shrewd Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte outwitted the Japanese in their own game “Jujitsu” by using the Philippines' weakness against bully’s Mainland China into a strength at the expense of the Nippon-koku?

Some of these Mitsubishi made F-2A multi-role (based on a Lockheed Martin F-16 variant)
 of the Japanese Air Force where it has 64 on its hangar could be donated or lease to the poorly

equipped Philippine Airs Force.

Japan wants to replace its F-16s and F-15s by ordering 5th Generation 42 stealth and
 multi-role F-35 Lightning II 

from the U.S.

Jujitso is defined by Dictionary.com as a method developed in Japan of defending oneself without the use of weapons by using the strength and weight of an adversary to disable him.

As you know Duterte declared in the past that he would ask China to finance a multi -billion pesos railway systems in Mindanao and in Luzon.

“I will tell China, do not claim ownership and I will not mention patrimony, hayaan natin muna iyan, gusto mo let’s set that aside, you might want trade exploration,” he said, referring to China.

“I will just ask you to build a rail, just like what you did for Africa,” he continued”

He exhorted the Chinese to just build a  high-speed railway just like the line project of the Kenya Railways Corporation, which has cut travel time from Nairobi to Mombasa from 13 to three hours.

When I heard him declared this statement, I posed to myself:

“Would the United States or Japan allow this China funding?”

Son of a gun, a healthy relationship between the Philippines and China would be, well, unhealthy to Japan as the Banzai country relies on the five trillion dollar a year trade lanes in the South China Sea (SCS) where Japanese tankers and cargo ships traverse.

“What happen if a shooting war between the Chinese and the Japanese erupt at the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu Islets that both countries passionately claimed?” I again posed to myself  since I could not asked somebody since I was alone in my room.

Gee whiz, Chinese subs, ships, and jets would start blasting with their weaponry the commercial cargo ships of the Japanese plying the SCS.

It’s dé·jà vu German U-Boats versus the ships of the Yanks and the Brits at the English Channel.

This ambushed at the SCS would surely paralyze the Japanese economy.

Before I could hear an answer from some geo-political experts, Masato Ohtaka, deputy press secretary for Japan's foreign ministry, said recently that Japan was willing to bankroll one of the biggest loans it could lent through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Excerpts of abs-cbn.com report that was posted last August 12:

“Japan on Friday announced it is pouring a massive $2.4 billion into a new railway in the Philippines aimed at easing Manila's notorious gridlock. Japan, Philippines' top trading partner and source of aid, said the 38-kilometer (24-mile) elevated commuter line would connect Manila to nearby Bulacan province to decongest the capital and help spur economic activity. This is one of the biggest projects Japan has ever embarked upon using the yen loan," Masato Ohtaka, deputy press secretary for Japan's foreign ministry, told reporters in Manila.

"Railways are one of our fortes ... We sympathize with the Filipinos that this is a project that needs to be done very, very quickly."

“Ohtaka said Japan was also open to building a railway in the southern region of Mindanao, a project Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had previously said China offered to fund. Manila's traffic problems cost the Philippines an estimated $64 million a day in 2015, a Japanese-funded study found”.

MORTZ'S CARTOON: POWER PLAY

Defense Sec grants Ex-Military Prof pleas to hold PMA Exam in Cotabato

By Gabriel Ortigoza

My dream is to include my province of North Cotabato in the official list of PMAEE.
In 2001, when I was still in the Corps of Professors of PMA, I gave PMA Entrance Examination at Southern Baptist College in Mlang, North Cotabato. It was the first PMAEE in the history of the province. 

Examinees for  cadetship at the Philippine Military Academy.

It so happened that year I was the OIC of a special PMAEE given in the cities of Davao, General Santos, Koronadal, and Cotabato. After I conducted PMAEE to four cities I went home in Mlang for a three-day R&R.
I didn't waste my time doing nothing on my rest days before I went back up to the mountains of Baguio. I decided to give PMAEE in my hometown of Mlang.
A day before the exam, I went to a radio station DXND in Kidapawan to announce I'm giving PMAEE at SBC. Thanks to my friend Grace Vergara-Tanghal for facilitating my public announcement and live interview at the station.
The following day, hundreds of youths in North Cotabato reported at the venue to take PMAEE as walk-in applicants. Several examinees passed that examination but only two made it to the academy and successfully graduated from PMA. One is my fellow from Mlang (last name is Tingson) and one is from Kidapawan (last name is Ancino). Both females and are still active officers of the Philippine Army. While they were still cadets at PMA their mothers from North Cotabato visited them in Baguio. I gladly welcomed them to stay in my quarters and served as their host inside Fort Del Pilar.
When I resigned from PMA in 2003 to join my wife in California I thought my dream of making North Cotabato into the official list of PMAEE Centers nationwide remains a dream.
A dream will remain a dream if you don't make it a goal. To reach a goal you must use SMART strategies to attain it. This acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and must be in a Time-frame. 

Don’t cry Leila, you power play vs. Duterte

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

In my recent radio program, some listeners and viewers at social media commented that President Rodrigo Duterte scathing speech recently at a police anniversary was misogynistic.

President Duterte Tells Public  Senator Leila De Lima Had a Driver-
Paramour (Kabit) named Ronnie.

sr

Misogynist, to the trike drivers and funeral attendants who read this column, means a person who hates, dislikes, mistrusts, or mistreats women.

For me the vitriol of the president against Senator Leila de Lima was above board.

For instance, how could his driver-body guard Ronnie Palisoc Dayan, explained the tens of millions of pesos White and Orange mansions he built at his residence at Barangay Galarin in Urbiztondo, Pangasinan, where some sources said used by de Lima and Dayan, a married man, for tryst.

Were those monies used by the mascular driver Dayan, as told by my fellow anchorwoman Audrey, taken from the jailed drug lords who cooked illegal drugs shabu at the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa especially when De Lima was then the Justice Secretary of the country?

A justice secretary in the Philippines not only supervises the National Bureau of Investigation but all jails under the Bureau of Jail, Management & Penology.

Geez man, very powerful position!

De Lima and her supporters and sympathizers should not cry foul to the “bully” actuation of the president.

In case the sex video of de Lima and a guy, where the alleged fat lady Senator acted like a jockey riding a horse at the tracks at the Saddle & Clubs Leisure Park in Santa Ana Park, proves to be authentic, the accusation of the president that the paramour was the bagman of De Lima, the senator should not only be sued but condemned for her hypocrisy.

In case the Senate Justice Committee she chaired succeeds in investigating and exposing police officials lead by Philippine National Police’s Chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa about the spate of killings of narcotic personalities, she still should be ashamed of herself because what she does in finding fault with the Duterte Administration in abetting the killings are sheer hypocrisy.

She cried foul about the vitriol from Duterte and the alleged demolition jobs against her by the president’s supporters at the traditional and social media, well it’s just part of the territory.
"Nag pa power play po kasi kayo maam".

Mortz's Political Cartoon: 2 GENERALS, CUSTOM COLLECTOR BEHIND SUGAR SMUGGLING