Mayor, VM, Dads pocket part of Loans

BY MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

Since former Police Four-Star General and Zambales Governor Hermogenes “Jun” Ebdane Jr was indicted on graft and usurpation of authority or official functions for allegedly issuing a mining permit beyond his mandate by the Ombudsman, allow me to give you a glimpse of our conversation in 2010 when I attended his inauguration as the new governor of Zambales on that year.
GOVERNOR: Kamusta si (General) Rey (Velasco)?
ME: Natalo sa mayoralty reelection niya, sir. Pero sabi niya sa akin pang presidente daw ang gastos niyo noong tinalo ninyo si Gov. Amor Deloso (of Zambales, used to be well-entrenched politician).
GOVERNOR: (Affronted). No love lost with me and Rey! Alam mo ba ng dahil sa kanya nag-away kami ni General (Renato) de Villa sa likod ng Malacanang?
ME; Bakit naman sir?
GOVERNOR: E gusto niyang mag Chief PNP (Philippine National Police) si Rey (PMA Class ‘71), e mas senior ako (PMA Class ’70). Minura niya ako “p*tang ina mo habang ako ang Executive Secretary ni presidente (President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), hindi ka maging Chief PNP!”
ME: Pero naging PNP Chief naman kayo, sir? Sabi nga ni General Rey sa akin, ang masakit sa kanya hindi iyong tinalo siya ni Mayor (Carlito) Zaplan sa pagiging mayor ng Sta. Barbara (Pangasinan) but noong hindi niya nakuha ang pagiging Chief PNP.
GOVERNOR: Nandito pa iyong mga recibo ng binayad ni Rey (deputy chief PNP then) sa mga newspapers at media para sira-an ako. Pero mabait ang Dios, na heart attack si De Villa. Si (General) Ermita ang pumalit na Executive Secretary, boss ko dati, kaya ako ang naging Chief PNP!
(Ebdane,after becoming chief of the powerful police force , became Defense Secretary (where I asked him in our meeting in Zambales on the Israel U.S made Bell Cobra attack helicopters the Philippines would be buying), and the very lucrative Secretary of the Department of Public Works & Highway.
***
Warrant of arrest looms to the many former and present Binmaley, Pangasinan’s Councillors dahil sila ay nakasuhan ng criminal case na Usurpation of Authority or Official Function.

JDV hails Poe rise in polls, nixes Duterte’s dictatorship plan

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

DAGUPAN CITY – The person who created the “Rainbow Coalition” in Congress and the Build- Operate-Transfer that expedited government projects during the Ramos Administration lauded Senator Grace Poe for leading the latest presidential polls but scrubed the plan of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte to create a revolutionary government once elected as president of the country.

ICAPP CHAIR GIVES HIS TAKES ON SPRATLY. Jose de Venecia, Co-Chairman of the prestigious
International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), answers queries last Sunday from media
 men on the brewing issues between China and the United States and the claimant countries on the
disputed islands and reefs at the South China Sea. MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

Jose de Venecia, a 5 – Time Speaker of the House of Representatives, said that even Poe eclipsed other presidential rivals at the latest Social Weather Stations and the Pulse Asia surveys it is still too early to celebrate since election is still far away.
‘Will there are the ups and downs of the polls. I congratulate her for her significant improvement in the rating, but these are early days, one year away is election. Situation is very fluid,” said last Sunday by de Venecia, a former presidential candidate at his palatial mansion located near the coastal area of this city.

Death Squad

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

While attending the other day my libel case hearing at the Regional Trial Court in Dagupan City, I could not prevent to shake my head with a mixed of consternation and amusement seeing yellow clad inmates of the Bureau of Jail, Management & Penology handcuffed and herded to their special pews inside the court. Almost all of them were charged with possession or selling of the illegal drugs. Selling of the illegal drug in the Philippines, despite its number of gram, is a non-bailable crime if one is apprehended by peace officers.

Death Squad

Some of them used to be my students in a university and one was my village mate.
Since we were not allowed to talk lest we would be chided by the judge, I used a sign language, to ask them their crimes, by mimicking somebody who stabbed (my hand swung a knife to someone), robbed somebody (my hand opening a door knob with a key), pounded for several times on the chair my right index finger where a man raped a woman, or sell illegal drug’s shabu or methamphetamine hydrochloride (I opened my right palm and threw something). All of them reciprocated by opening their palm and threw something mimicking a shabu. It means, son of a gun, these putative culprits implied that they were charged in selling of the illegal drugs
****
It seemed the dreaded Dagupan Death Squad (DDS), that killed countless habitual delinquents in the past, struck again at 1 Pm of June 24 by shooting Maximo Aspric, an ex convict and notorious robber, when he was disembarking in a motorized tricycle at Barangay Malued in the city.
“A white legal sized bond paper with writing’s “Huwag ako tularan, tulak (shabu pusher), Snatcher ako – DDS, was found near his body,” a police text message said.
It was more than a year ago or two that a “recidivist” akyat bahay (burglar) in the same village was waylaid in the wee hour and was seen with a similar bond paper warning the public not to emulate his nefarious activities.
According to my source that has an alleged contact with the DDS, the group on their selective extra judicial killings missed only Rewel S. Bugayong alias “Kamote”, a habitual delinquent in Barangay Tapuac, Dagupan City.
A legal size bond paper with a warning was found too in the place where he was shot by two assassins wearing baseball caps while he was playing cards .
“Doon lang daw sila pumalpak kay Kamote,” he told me.
Here’s my report on that incident a day after he was shot :” Bugayong, a notorious robber whose mugging and house looting activities gave headaches to village officials and police for years, was confined at the intensive care unit of the Region I Medical Center, with a bullet ensconced at his jaw after alleged members of a death squad attempted to kill him on the night of May 20.
The same resident said he suspected that the hit man was part of a group that was behind the series of extra judicial killings of illegal drug pushers and robbers whose hog tied bodies pumped with bullets or with stab wounds were dumped like garbage along the national highways here.
The source said one of the two assassins surreptitiously went behind Bugayong and shot him three times but only one of the bullets hit him on the nape and penetrated his jaw”

China to do a Falkland after economy's tailspin?

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

According to renowned stock exchange expert’s BlackRock the fall of the Chinese stock market is inevitable despite Chinese President Xi Jinping government rallying the market through central bank’s rate cuts, tweaking margin-trading rules, slowing the pace of initial public offerings, and taking up share prices.

 Argentinian  U.S made A-4B Skyhawk jets incredible low level attack on  the British
 HMS Broadsword and Coventry

But this would be short lived. 

"The tide is going to go out, and there’s going to be a lot of people without their swimming trunks on," strategist Ewen Cameron Watt of BlackRock told Bloomberg Television, borrowing from Warren Buffett's observation about investors caught swimming naked when markets get shaky.

Some of the factors, economists see, on the plunge of the Chinese economy are anchored to its U.S $28 trillion of public and private debt and its unprecedented $363 billion of margin debt that's supporting those shares.

Demand of steel among Chinese manufacturers and building makers are collapsing because many investors shifted their shops to labour cheap Vietnam and Cambodia.

The decline from the ballyhooed double digit growth in the past decades to a single digit and declining, 7%, of China’s Gross Domestic Product undermined the fate of the Chinese workers.

With a slowing economy feared to be gobbled by an explosion of a stock bubble, are the Chinese bracing for the worst?

In case economic hardship caught with the Sinos, would the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) starts a shooting war in the South China Sea (SCS) versus the United States, Japan, Australia, and some members of the South East Asean Nations to divert the attention of its people who would rise up and probably replaced the apparatchiks at the CCP?

 Nánshā or the Spratly Islands spark a patriotic cord to the Chinese whenever foreign powers claim ownership to them.

This scenario had happened with the military Junta in Argentina in April 2, 1981 when it was losing a popular support from the masses who protested in the streets the government because of the country’s devastating economic stagnation and patent human rights violations of the military brass.

Q & A: ICAPP Chair on South China Sea’s row: Suspend Sovereignty

Recently, political columnist Mortz C. Ortigoza of Northern Watch interviewed former Philippines 5-Time Speaker Jose de Venecia on the pressing issues that caused jittery to the world on the aggressive reclamation and arbitrary possession of islands and reefs by Mainland China being claimed too by other countries at the South China Sea (SCS). De Venecia, known as a political connoisseur, is the founding chairman and co-chairman of the International Conference of Asian, Political Parties (ICAPP). Excerpts:

NORTHERN WATCH (NW): In the book of Bill Hayton’s South China Sea you mentioned at the 3rd Congress of the International Conference of Political Parties in Beijing in 2004 that “we should not allow regional differences” on the problems in the Spratly Islands.

It mentioned there that at your behest the Department of Energy under Undersecretary Eduardo Manalac signed with Mainland China a joint maritime seismic undertaking.

In case you became the Prime Minister on that time, do you think this crisis at the Spratly and Scarborough Shoals between China and the Philippines would not happen?

JOSE DE VENECIA (JDV): We signed it already (chuckle). We signed already on the agreement and we had peace of normalcy on the South China Sea for three or four years!

\

VIDEO: PH 5-time House Speaker and political connoisseur Joe de Venecia on South China Sea, China alienating U.S, Japan, Philippines, Grace Poe as favorite Ph presidential bet, Rod Duterte as real package to salvage PH as economic basket case, etc. INTERVIEWER: PROF. MORTZ ORTIGOZA, Political Columnist.

NW: But if you are still with the government now do you think these brouhahas on the SCS would still be happening?

JDV: Well, first we should revived the agreement, continue with the seismic agreement, preparatory drilling of the hydro carbon potential there. And then after that even before that we agree on the equitable project sharing. “Philippines this is your share, China this is your share, Vietnam this is your share, Malaysia you’re farther away, Brunei you’re father away this is your share. Everybody agrees together with Taiwan - okay, let’s start drilling. During the time of drilling, we’ll invite the Americans to drill for us. We invite the Europeans to drill for us, or we can ask the Chinese, because they have so many oil rigs and some of the largest rigs in Asia and the world will ask China, you do conduct the drilling for us. So aside from your share and the hydro carbon, you will get another specific fee for the drilling the wells, which we will be paying anyhow to the Europeans or to the Americans.

NW: Like the German, Norwegian, and the British formula at Ecofisk in the North Seas?

VIDEO: JDV on South China Sea, Grace Poe, Duterte

PH 5-time House Speaker and political connoisseur Joe de Venecia on South China Sea, China alienating U.S, Japan, Philippines,  Grace Poe as favorite Ph presidential bet, Rod Duterte as real package to salvage PH as economic basket case, etc. INTERVIEWER: PROF. MORTZ ORTIGOZA, Political Columnist.

No conflict if Poe, Binay seek NPC support – FPJ Campaign Manager

TRAIL BLAZER. Senator Grace Poe blazed out
2016 presidential rival Vice President Jejomar
Binay in the June 2015 Pulse Asia's  poll survey.

By Mortz Ortigoza

After the son of Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco, the chairman emeritus of the Nationalist People's Coalition, endorsed months ago Vice President Jejomar Binay as his presidential bet in the 2016 election, the 2004 presidential campaign manager in Pangasinan of the late Fernando Poe, Jr. said there is no conflict in case Senator Grace Poe joins the NPC.

No conflict

“Mark (Cojuangco) will wait for what NPC will endorse. He will endorse Binay to the party but he will follow who will be the party will endorse (in the convention). That was what Mark said in Sto. Tomas (Pangasinan) when VP Binay was there,” the chair of Abono Party-List and Samahang Industriya at Agrikultura said.

NPC is the second most powerful party after the Liberal Party in the country.

The brouhahas that NPC would face a dilemma after the young Cojuangco, the provincial chair of the NPC in the vote rich Pangasinan endorsed last March Binay as his personal choice for the Presidency spawned a stir at the social media after Chairman So, a political ally of the Cojuangcos, brought recently  in Pangasinan Senator Poe for powwows.

A stir

“Paano na si Binay ni FC (former Congressman) Mark Cojuangco? Kung si Grace Poe pala ang manok ni Campaign Manager?” posed at Face Book by Vangie Padilla, a media ally of gubernatorial aspirant Amado Espino III, the son and name sake of Pangasinan Governor Espino, and Cojuangco’s putative rival for the governorship in the 2016 election.

So said that the statement in the meeting at Sto. Tomas  of Cojuangco answered all the questions after Cojuangco endorsed last March in Binmaley, Pangasinan Binay as his personal candidate for president.

Padilla lauded So for enlightening her.

“Okay.My apologies for not being there Chairman, with your reply I am enlightened,“ She said.

Cojuangco announced last March that he would honor whom the NPC supports in the presidential election.

“Bagama’t ako po ay pribadong tao, ako ang chairman ng Nationalist People’s Coalition dito sa probinsiya. Ang proseso namin sa pagpili ng aming susuportahan ay proseso na dinidesisyunan ng mga nakatataas sa amin. Pero bilang chairman, ipaglalaban ko na ma-adopt si VP Binay ng aming partido bilang kandidato namin para sa pagka-presidente ng Pilipinas pagdating ng 2016”.

Liberal Party stalwart and Pangasinan former Congresswoman Rachel Arenas, a senatorial wannabe, denied that Cojuangco’s endorsement of Binay was final.

“Ang pagka-intinde ko Cong Mark has not really endorsed. Ang nangyari lang ang sabi ni Cong Mark he is waiting for the party’s decision. But alam ko the vice president visited and Cong Mark was with him. Siguro to give respect also because he is the incumbent second highest positioned (person) in the land”.
Arenas, her mother  Representative Rosemarie "Baby" Arenas (3rd District, Pangasinan), Former Speaker Jose de Venecia, Representative Gina de Venecia (4th District, Pangasinan, and Representative Marlyn Primicias-Agabas (6th District, Pangasinan) are loyal political allies of Cojuangco.

NPC members gravitates for Poe-Escudeto's tandem

Earlier, Deputy House Speaker Giorgidi Aggabao, the NPC president, was reported as saying that party members were inclined to support a Poe - (Senator Chiz) Escudero presidential and vice presidential ticket.

“There’s nothing definite, but most of us, most of the members of the NPC, agree with what President Aggabao said,” Senator Tito Sotto said in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Sotto cited that the duo could easily get the backing of the NPC because they are considered as “closet members” of the Party.

Both Poe and Escudero have no party affiliation.

Escudero was a former presidential bet of the party in the 2010 election but backed out and resigned from the NPC but remained friendly with the party.