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. |
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. |
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.
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‘Don’t you know that the official table you’re using used to be the table of the general that is groomed to be the next chief of the Philippine National Police” I told Ediong, a member of the Philippine National Police Academy class of 1999 whose “mistahs” are Lt. Colonels Rod Castro (the consummate mission oriented intelligence chief) and the mestizo Jack Candelario (chief of police of Mangaldan town).
I don’t know if Ediong, a Baguio City resident, was perturbed by my comment.
Of course he knows that I was talking about Police Chief Supt. Raul Petrasanta, a resident of the town and presently the regional director of police regional office 3 (PRO-3) based in Pampanga.
I told him that the official table and probably the official chair are the magic stuffs for going to places, or they can be a jinx for ones career.
Jinx for the sake of the balut vendors, jeepney drivers, and other pedestrian who gamble their time to read this column means a person or thing that brings bad luck. .
“Don’t you know that I read a livid conversation among the members of the Army Scout Ranger - those small units of elite Army infantry men who bring war directly to the enemy and with “musang” (civit cat) as symbol of their patch embroidered on both of the shoulders of their black uniform) at their Face Book Community Page,”
One of them on the internet thread said: “Mga ka-musang gapangin na natin itong mga mayayabang at korupt na mga pulis at gigilitan natin sila sa le-eg”.
Ediong asked why.
I told him the Scout Rangers really felt bad about the thousands of Russian made AK-47 imported by Isidro Lozada, owner of a security agency in Caraga Region, who allegedly conspired with PNP top brass that included Petrasanta, as former head of the Firearm & Explosive Office.
“Mga ka musang, ang pumapatay sa mga kabaro natin sa Army ay itong mga corrupt na miyembro ng PNP na kasabwat sa pagbenta ng P55,000 na AK-47 na kumikitil sa ating mga buhay sa field,” one of the Scout Rangers commented on the FB board.
Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) Director Benjamin Magalong, upper class of Petrasanta at the PMA and perceived rival at the top police post, said at least 19 police officers could be hit with administrative and criminal charges resulting from this.
I opined that with the adverse media reports on the thousands of AK-47 allegedly sold to the communist and the demolition jobs that probably came from those generals that belong to PMA (Philippine Military Academy) Classes of 1982 and 1983 (Petrasanta, favorite of the President Noynoy Aquino and sister Kris) could kiss his ambition good bye”.
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Is being a chief PNP everything?
When Rey Velasco (police deputy director general, PMA Class 1971 whose illustrated classmates were Senator Gringo Honasan and Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery Panfilo Lacson) lost in his 2010 reelection mayoralty bid by a 244 hair thin votes to veteran politician Carlito Zaplan, I asked him the following: “Is this loss the most devastating thing that happened in your life?”
Velasco, who has a lot of vision for his town, pooh-poohed my query. He said he was more hurt when he did not get the chief PNP’s plum.
Now allow me to connect this Velasco conversation to my visit at the residence of former PNP chief Jun Ebdane, through the intercession of his pal veteran newspaperman Jun Velasco. In a huddle with Ebdane a day after he celebrated his bacchanalian feast as the new governor of Zambales by defeating the well-entrenched battle scarred politician former Governor Amor Deloso, I asked him that as a former Defense Secretary, why the militarily poor Philippines did not purchase the used Cobra Helicopters and Kfir jets cheaply sold by the Israeli.
After giving some of his thoughts on my query, he asked me how’s Rey Velasco.
I told him he just lost to Zaplan in a razor thin but Pyrrhic victory.
Broadcaster Harold Barcelona, his friend since his PNP provincial directorship day in Pangasinan, who until now still visit him to get some “dough”, told him that Velasco told us media men that Ebdane’s budget for governorship was an allocation already for a presidential election.
Ebdane was flustered.
“No love lost between me and Rey,” he smarted.
He said he could show us the photo copy of receipts he got from media men and newspaper publishers in Manila Rey commissioned to demolish his chances for the chief PNP.
“Nakasalubong ko pa sa Malacanang si (Renato) de Villa. He chided me that as long as he is the
Executive secretary malabo na ang chansa ko maging chief PNP”
De Villa by the way was the patron of Velasco.
Ebdane however said that God was good to him.
“Na heart attack si de Villa, pinalitan ni (Eduardo) Ermita (Ebdane’s patron) siya as executive secretary”
Although Ebdane told us some juicy and controversial story, I’d rather entertain you dear readers on this information and nothing more I got form the horses’ mouths.
Hope you relish my stuffs mga tsismoso he he.
(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too attotomortz@yahoo.com).
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