AT least one person in Pangasinan is being victimized every week in so-called text scams, according to the Department of Trade and Industry provincial office.

As a result, the DTI has warned the public anew to ignore any text message they received informing them that they won millions of pesos in alleged sweepstakes draws.

DTI Provincial Director Daria Mingaracal said it is possible there is a syndicate based in Luzon using names of certain companies and networks to perpetrate the scam.

She revealed that a man from Manaoag town came to her office recently to admit having been deceived by people who sent him a text message informing him that he won P8 million in a lottery.

Instead of ignoring the text message, the man texted back and inquired how he could get his prize. The result was he was gypped of P6,000 which he used in buying 20 cell phone cards at P300 each as an alleged pre-requisite before the supposed lottery officials hand him the pot money.

After sending all the numbers of the cell cards, he was asked to deposit P20,000 to a certain bank account allegedly to cover a supposed processing fee. At this point, he decided to check with the DTI provincial office whether there was really such a lottery. He was told that he was victimized by persons involved in a text scam.

Mingaracal said her office had long alerted the people of Pangasinan, warning them that if they were offered money and that the offer is too good to be true, they should ignore it right away.

BINMALEY – The municipal government is seeking from its townsfolk a one-year moratorium in the operations of fish pens in order to restore the degraded ecosystems of various rivers and waterways and help maintain its reputation as aquaculture capital of Pangasinan.

Municipal Mayor Simplicio Rosario said the moratorium is expected to improve the quality of water which benefit all river stakeholders, including owners of over 3,200 hectares of fishponds.

“We are seeking our townmates cooperation to agree to this moratorium because this is the only way we can save our rivers from complete degradation,” Rosario said.

He said the poor quality of water in Binmaley, also regarded as the prawn capital of the province of Pangasinan, has spawned repeated fishkills every year, the most recent being in May this year when P16 million worth of fish were destroyed.

The river in Binmaley is connected to Dagupan City which gets its water through the river mouth separating the Dagupan City barangays of Pugaro and Bonuan Gueset.

“If we will remove our fish pens and the fishkill would still persist, we can only blame the pen owners in Dagupan City. Thus, we can file a class suit in order to stop their operations,” Rosario said.

He said that clean water must flow into fishponds which, he added, are no longer earning enough despite the fact that their owners are paying huge land taxes, compared to pen owners who are not paying any tax to the government.

Rosario acknowledged that there are today 2,431 fishpond operators in his town.

ARCHBISHOP Oscar Cruz of the Lingayen-Dagupan archdiocese favors the ban on homosexuals entering priesthood but clarified that gender orientation in no way diminishes the dignity of humans.

Cruz was reacting to the move of the Catholic Church to keep away homosexuals from the priesthood, which he believes “is not degrading nor a discriminating observance” but only a “simple reality”.

The former president of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines and also anti-jueteng crusader, maintained that it would be rather difficult for a homosexual to be pushed to a heterosexual mileu, as this is neither logical nor fair.

He maintained however that heterosexuals unduly inclined to women are also neither meant for the priesthood. He clarified that this too is not discrimination but admission of truth.

“It would be unrealistic to impose on them celibacy. Such would be something extraordinary which is also unfair and unreasonable,” Cruz said.

In the same way, he said, women are not meant to become priests. This, he added, “are dissonant composites—not discriminatory realities”.

Maintaining that every human person must be good for something though not for everything, Cruz said that while majority of the people get married, there are those who simply do not for one reason or another.

These people do not feel that marriage is for them so they remain single for life. This is something connatural for them that does not make them more or less of a person, he said.

Cruz said there are homosexuals who succeed and how fail in temporal matters and so are heterosexuals who shine and fade in earthly pursuits. What makes them rise and fall is not their sexual identity but rather their talents as persons and their opportunities as individuals, he rationalized.

CHAMPIONING freedom of speech, expression, and of the press, the Supreme Court acquitted the editor-publisher of the Sunday Post, a weekly publication circulated in the Visayas and Mindanao, of libel chargeas.

The Court said it was “clear that there was nothing untruthful” in the one-page paid advertisement in the October 13, 1991 issue of the Sunday Post enumerating the records of criminal cases and photographs of a Cebu-based broadcaster being arrested.

The Court’s Second Division, through Justice Dante O. Tinga, reversed and set aside the portion of the Cebu City Regional Trial Court’s May 17, 1994 decision convicting Sunday Post editor-publisher Ciriaco “Boy” Guingguing of libel.

The Court also reversed and set aside the July 29,1996 decision and October 3, 1996 resolution of the Court of Appeals upholding the RTC ruling.

Since only Guingguing filed the petition, the verdict against his co-accused Segundo Lim, who paid for the subject one-page ad, had become final and executory.

“The publication of the subject advertisement by petitioner and Lim cannot be deemed by this Court to have been done with actual malice. Aside from the fact that the information contained in said publication was true, the intention to let the public know the character of their radio commentator can at best be subsumed under the mantle of having been done with good motives and for justifiable ends.

The advertisement in question falls squarely within the bounds of constitutionally protected expression under Sec. 4, Art. III, and thus, acquittal is mandated,” the Court said. (Guingguing v. CA and People, GR No. 128959, September 30, 2005)

Istorya toniay editor min BFH, akabanda kono ditan ed say Star of David Hotel ta walay nila tod Manaoag. Et agustoan to kono so inkialagey na sakey ya otel ed satan a dadayoen a baley ta singa mas lalon nalukasan iray potensiyal na Manaoag. Sakey so Manaoag ed saray baley ya paspasyaren nen BFH sanen ogaw niya ta ditay panaayaman na saray babai, lalaki tan kakapinsan tora.

Nen say onlanirad Binalonan o Urdaneta o Dagupan iray walan bisita o debotos na Birhen na Manaoag, nitanlan walad olsoran da so sakey a marakerakep ya panayaman tan panliliketan a pasen.

Kayarian nen oga-ogaw nin Janette Patacsil Yaari ya asaway sakey ya Israelita, say Star of David (ningaran ed bitewen a simbolo nasyonal na saman a bansan Israel) so walaan na function room ya makakargay 150 a totoo, videoke rooms, internet café tan komportable ran kuarton paabang tan “lounge area”.

Sali yopay onsamar ditan sakey agew no makabanda kayod Manaoag.

WHATEVER administration detractors, angry militants and other cynics may say, it cannot be denied that the economy has never been this vibrant since about four, five months back and especially as December now trots in.

Word is that dollar remittances of Overseas Filipino Workers who have long been coming to the aid (albeit, coincidentally, according to critics) of their motherland’s financial distress is about to hit $12 billion and the Philippine peso has thus grown that much stronger.

The rosy signs are there: Higher demands for RP bonds, robust trading at the stock market and President Arroyo’s now buoyed up spirit seriously considering more non-wage benefits for workers to tide them over hard times even without the cash equivalent yet.

The figures of course are hard to dispute because these are official and the more sober-minded oppositionists, while acknowledging these grudgingly and making some dire warnings of these developments being at best temporary or artificial, seem to give things now the benefit of the doubt. This is as good a bargain as any for the once-beleaguered administration – to have a breathing spell from the myriad of stink bombs thrown at its direction every which way in the past months. Now, if it can only sustain the momentum, this country will be in business once again.

This section realizes there are national issues that have yet to see a firm and final closure. But it shares the belief of some in the center that it would be unfortunate if in the quest for political resolutions, the economy is summarily sacrificed or left to rise on its own. We are after all talking about national survival in these globally perilous times and without unity – even only temporarily – we have but two bitter choices on our fate as a nation: to hang separately or to hang together.

Your choice, fellow Pinoys, fellow Pangasinenses!

AFTER ALL
Behn Fer.Hortaleza, Jr.

WE do not know if there is a precedent case in jurisprudence of the courtroom drama that unfolded in the sala of Judge Ulysses Raciles Butuyan the past two weeks climaxing in the sensational dismissal of the cases against the suspects in the killing of Pasig City lady Judge Estrellita Paas last Nov. 30. We’re quite sure though that what happened further enriches the study of law in these parts.

The best way to describe the court “clash” between Butuyan (who was our jolly, articulate neighbor-tenant here at Vicar Hotel, and a star columnist of this paper too, before he left his law office to become Tayug regional trial court judge) and private prosecutor Ronald Paas, son of the slain lady judge, is that it was a scintillating collision between an irresistible force and an immovable object..Who’s what between them we leave that for the reader to discern.

Our layman’s perception of the whole thing is that the judge — who may or may not have been piqued by the arguments and style of young lawyer Paas in insisting that he (Butuyan) issue a warrant of arrest for the two suspected killers of his mother – was not satisfied about the police solution of the celebrated case. Otherwise, he could have easily given in to the Paas request and be done with it.

In plain words, Butuyan must have thought the accused were “fall guys” or that at best, Elmer Cabilles’ having supposedly “confessed” to the crime to his wife, take note, not directly to the police, had serious flaws, legally speaking.

On the other hand, lawyer Paas must have had reasons to suspect Butuyan of “biasness” for having already noted earlier on that the prosecution’s witness(es) testimonies were based largely on hearsay. That, plus the judge’s refusal to issue a warrant of arrest until after he has questioned the witnesses to establish “probable cause” for the issuance of an arrest warrant, may have engendered the young Paas’ suspicion – correctly or wrongly – that the judge was playing partial.

Legal minds we’ve talked to on the case, based on the news reports, say what should be interesting is how the higher courts will rule on the matter of whether or not Butuyan was right in proceeding to hear and summarily decide on dismissing the case even while a motion – though formally filed rather late – was precisely seeking his inhibition from hearing the case.

The Pen Speaks
Danny O. Sagun

A TOWN councilor, very much married, is accused of having an affair with a young lass and the accuser is the girl’s father himself. Another alderman is charged of raping a woman, while the family of a legislator from another town was surprised to see the supposed girlfriend suddenly showing up at their house. A doctor of education-pretender is stripped of her doctorate degree for falsifying her records but still clings to her position as principal of a high school in the fourth district. Two mediapersons engaged in a fistfight over manna from a board member after an interview because the group (more than 10?) have difficulty dividing the money among themselves. A mediaman (again, kuno) shows his plain ignorance by shooting the wrong question in a presscon with the BIR chief on Tuesday.

Such news reports landed in local broadcasts this week as local radio anchors delightfully feasted on the controversies. Indeed, what is happening to our society, or to rephrase it, what is happening to those people supposed to be our guiding lights and leaders? Take as example that educator who herself could not pass the honesty test since, as reliable reports went, she had falsified her records? If she still has the face to mingle with her colleagues and the students despite such serious charges, I really don’t know what’s happening in our midst.

Regarding the three municipal aldermen, well, politicos have long been there. We mean the electorate seems to look the other way as regards moral qualifications of a candidate during elections. We have mayors, and presidents even, who maintain mistresses, okay, girlfriends left and right and yet they are politically ensconced in their turf.

Lest we be misunderstood, we do not want immoral persons to rule us (serve may be the proper word). Public servants are supposed to be exemplars of good morals. We are only talking of the realities prevailing now in our society, however.

As to our colleagues in the profession, it pains us to note that some mediapersons are no longer looking for news during coverages, presscons, interviews, and the like but, to put it bluntly, for money or envelop. We cannot entirely fault them, because politicians, lobbyists, propagandists have turned them that way – in quest of dole-outs, not news. They have become accustomed to it so that without the padulas they could not write or broadcast news anymore. Some even go to the extent of attacking the news source. There are many mediamen committed to their profession though. With or without any ‘blessing’ they just do their job.

Mediapersons are looked up to as knowledgeable and skilled in the art of questioning. But what happened in that presscon with BIR Commissioner Bunag at the EVAT roadshow betrayed the ignorance of some self-styled newsmen about the nature and qualifications for the job, prompting a senior newsman to shake his head in disgust and anguish as he watched that fellow (we do not know who he was and which media outlet he was connected with, if at all) shoot his off-tangent question. “Agyo ipapaway so inkaignorante yo … kababaing,” the senior member was overheard saying.

Smorgasbord
Liway C. Manantan-Yparraguirre

(First and foremost, I would like to thank the publisher for giving me the privilege to write a column in this weekly paper that reaches and touches the world. I choose Smorgasbord as title because I intend to impart bits and pieces of information on what’s going on around us, leaving the reader the choice what to nibble at and what to munch on. )

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WINDOWS
Gabriel L. Cardinoza

IT looks like Pangasinenses strongly favor a shift from the existing presidential form of government to parliamentary. Based on last Friday’s consultation conducted by the Consultative Commission at the Pangasinan Regency Hotel, Pangasinenses also want the present unitary structure of government changed to federal.

There were several issues and concerns raised during the separate workshops. For instance, Vice Gov. Oscar Lambino, who was there the whole day, was concerned about checks and balances in a parliamentary system. “How can we ensure checks and balances in a parliamentary system?” he asked.

Regional Development Council chair Dr. Ado Duque, who was in the same workshop group, asked if the abolition of the position of Speaker under a parliamentary system will be good for the country.

Dagupan City Councilor Vlad Mata, for his part, wondered if a parliamentary form of government will survive in an ethnically-divided country like ours. “A parliamentary system also requires a strong bureaucracy and a strong party system, which the Philippines does not have,” he added.

Good points. But as more and more issues were raised during the discussions, our very own Commissioner Raul Lambino, who, incidentally, was the ConCom Commissioners’ team leader, all the more convinced the participants on the need for a parliamentary shift through his answers.

To my mind, the participants were almost unanimous in voting for a parliamentary shift because they were able to get a clearer glimpse on how a parliamentary system works based on the commissioners’ explanations. With Raul in his workshop group were Commissioners Oscar Rodriguez, a former congressman and now San Fernando City mayor, and Sr. Luz Emmanuel Soriano, Commissioner, EDSA People Power Commission; UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines.

Another interesting result of last Friday’s consultation is that most Pangasinenses want foreigners to do business in the Philippines. This means that they want the Constitutionally-mandated 60-percent Filipino ownership in businesses doing business in the Philippines changed.

Mayor Benjamin Lim, who was in the workshop, batted for an open-door policy that would allow foreign-owned companies to set up businesses in the country. The mayor sadly noted that the world’s top 1,000 corporations had instead set up in the People’s Republic of China because of, despite its being Communist, that country’s liberal foreign investment policy.

The participants also agreed to allow foreigners to own commercial and industrial lands where they will set up their businesses as well as ownership of residential lands. They, however, opposed foreign ownership of private agricultural lands.

Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez, who presided over the workshop with businessman Levy Laus, explained after the voting that allowing foreigners to own residential lands in the country would attract them to retire here. In the process, he added, more opportunities for caregivers, nurses, physical therapists and other medical workers will be opened.

The workshop participants also agreed to allow foreign-owned corporations to go into large-scale development projects of the country’s natural resources, such as mining. And this makes sense, because doing so will make them accountable and responsible in everything that they do in the development projects.

QUICKQUOTE: How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? — Charles De Gaulle