By Mortz C. Ortigoza
The reason why former four-star general and national
police chief Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa earned a niche in the heart and mind of
Filipino voters was not only his derring-do to belt a song or songs while lady
spectators pulled their male counterparts to dance with the music he averagely
sang but his provincial demeanour spiced up by his Cebuano or Mindanaon thick
accented Tagalog.
These are his comparative advantage to other
senatorial rivals like Bam Aquino, JV Ejercito, and others who were outside the
Magic 12 of the 2019 Senate Race’s surveys.
I’ve been telling media colleagues here in
Luzon why Tagalog ladies loved their Visayan or Mindanoan boyfriends or
husbands not because of their sexual prowess but because of the thickness of
their tongue in enunciating a correct sounding American word.
ITAGA MO SA BATO - Pollster’s Social Weather Station No. 10 senatorial wannabe retired police general Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa was smiling when I told him in "Bisaya" names of his relatives in Barangay Bato, Sta. Cruz , Davao del Sur, my town mate Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol, and his "Good Boy" PMA, classmate in Mindanao. |
Peace for them is “Pis”.
As a resident of Mindanao in the middle of 1970s to middle of 1980s, the ballyhooed “Pis” word for them had, son of a gun, multiple meanings.
Pis could be “Face”, “Peace”, “Paste”, "Piss", or “Fish”.
That’s why when I told former Five –Time House
Speaker Joe de Venecia at a presidential rally of the Liberal Party in 2016
that when I asked Senator Manny Pacquiao how was the Peace and Order situation
in my beloved island Mindanao, he told me: “Many fish but no order in the
Tuna Port there in my home place General Santos City”.
Of course I have to immediately calmed down the
rabble rousing Speaker who had a guffaw but seemed to be hit by a stroke
on my joke on what he thought was a faux pas from the Senator
whose college degree was complimented by the Acceleration or
Accreditation and Equivalency Test of the Department of Education where the
world saw him catapulted from Grade 6 to the Tertiary.
****
Let’s go back to senatorial candidate Bato dela Rosa
when he was invited last Monday by the ageless Bayambang Billionaire Mayor
Cezar T. Quiambao, whose wife is the sultry and pretty young actress Niña" José, for
a “stump (discourse)” inside the ritzy, cozy, swanky, and air conditioned
public gymnasium built under the intercession of Quiambao
– whose family controlled a majority stocks of the renowned
Stradcom Corporation.
“Si Mayor Cezar Quiambao pinaka idol ko. Huwag lang
magtampo si (Alaminos City) Mayor Celeste (gubernatorial bet). Aminin ko talaga
sa ngayon idol ko talaga si mayor!”, to the wild applause and
cheers of the hoi polloi.
The barrel chested and bald headed Bato, a
handsome version of the American animated film hero Shrek, told the multitude
how maids in Hong Kong swarmed on him and fellow senatorial aspirant Imee
Marcos for three hours for photo takings a night before his appointment with
Mayor Quiambao and the people of Bayambang.
“Walang one hour akong nagsalita doon. Tatlong
oras ang picture taking. Sabi ko sa kanila ihing-ihi na ako. Sabi nila sir,
ihi-an mo na kami!” the general, who even mentioned retired Pangasinan
Colonels Manuel Velasco and Pat Orduna as colleague, cited.
After the event, I asked the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1986 if he was not bothered that he and President Rodrigo Duterte will be criminally tried someday by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague and the opposition and those kin of those who were killed in the Drug War will file murder charges against them in the local court.
This was his retort to me:
“Well, ako naman ay lalaking may bayag. Kung
talagang kagagawan ko iyon kung kailangan ikulong ako magpapakulong ako. Ganoon
lang iyon! Ginawa mo iyan panindigan mo. Basta, ang problema kung talagang
ginawa natin iyan. Pero I swear to God I have no orders. Wala ako orders sa mga
tao, wala ako involvement na patayin iyong mga drug personalities na iyan. Wala
ako order”.
Before I left the general, I told him in Bisaya about his once “bad boy PMA classmate” in Mindanao who was cashiered during their junior days ranks in the Officers’ Corp.
“Ah ha ha ha! Si ____ _________, mistah
(classmate) ko iyan, mistah ko iyan! Kamusta mo ako sa kanya!,” he
bursted into laughter.
In my next column, I will tell you how the recently
Social Weather Station’s poll No. 10, gee whiz, KaPampangan Lito Lapid was No.
5, narrated how countless of Flips, er, Filipinos became “Zombies” because of
kid gloves treatment of the past administrations against narcotics sellers if
Duterte did not become president, how the country nearly become a Narco State
like Colombia and Mexico when drug lords can fund an electoral candidate to
win, how the Chinese inside the slammer Muntinlupa control more than 50 percent
of the imported drug mostly shabu or meth in the Philippines and what did he do
to them when he was the director of the Bureau of Correction.
READ MY OTHER ARTICLE:
(You can read my
selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at
Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento