BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR,.

SO FAR, it’s just a plan, alright?

But surely, creating a novel Chinatown in Dagupan sounds romantic enough, considering that the Chinese entrepreneurs of the city have been here for as long as those now in their late fifties can remember.

The Chinese-owned stores in Dagupan have come as huge and imposing as the CSI and Magic mall chains and as modest and sturdy as the Botica China and Kwong Tay and Sanitary bakeries downtown. Their managements have been passed on from one generation to the next and while the heirs have imbibed the native Dagupenos’ culture and street ways, they basically adhere to the cool efficiency of the mostly Mandarin community.

They even have, for good measure, their own firefighting unit, the Panda whose young firemen have earned the public’s admiration for their quick-and-sure response and modern fire retardants during conflagrations.

Dagupan will only be paying proper tribute to our Chinese brothers when and if such a Chinatown is created in these parts. Only problem (?) though is, what would stop the Indians from clamoring for such an honor too? They’ve also been more or less permanent fixtures of Dagupan business all these many years. Ask Ashok VashandaniOh, and never mind the Muslim groups; they’ve had their own ‘flourishing’ community in these parts long time ago. Ask Michael Bagul.

* * * *

Pangasinan, this beautiful province, is now sadly caught in a maelstrom of political conflict the likes of which we may have never seen before. Like a sticky spider’s web, it has brought some of our great leaders in the province into some confrontations they would ordinarily have avoided and preferred to settle among themselves in private powwows.

You may already know by now how the current Joe de Venecia-Bebot Villar set-to is being fanned by media reports. Knowing both as gentlemen of the first order however, we hope that this will come to pass soon.

Already, it is hurting not just the families of both Pangasinan leaders but also their acquaintances, close, and not-too-close, as each one consciously shows where his trust and beliefs lie between the two, thereby straining once tight camaraderies and relationships.

Truly, the NBN-ZTE bribery scandal has far-reaching implications to many players in the national and local scenes that one is tempted to think a malevolent spell has been cast upon us as a nation to make brothers fight against brothers, sons against sons and friends against friends.

Would that this whole imbroglio now find closure and the wounds heal to make Pangasinan whole and united again as in that time not too long ago when the battlecry “Natan la, Pangasinan” rang clear and true some years back.

* * * *
I did warn – and repeatedly –our estranged colleagues over at the Pangasinan Tri-Media Association (Patrima) late last year that unless they distance themselves from the unsavory vortex of jueteng, they will find themselves gripped by it and burned.

Now ‘burned’, they are. A local newspaper ‘Hataw’ purportedly published in Baguio (but predominantly reporting on Pangasinan newsbits) has blown the lid off the jueteng payola for Pangasinan media. Names, familiar ones to be sure, have been mercilessly dropped by a columnist of that tabloid, Rosanna E. Mandapat, like some “Who’s Who” list.

In fairness, the list is not complete as far as I know. The smaller frys who were thrown just crumbs like P500 to P1,000 a month just so they won’t crow were left out in the citation –mercifully — either by the writer herself or probably by her insider sources.

* * * *
I knew many months back that there was such a list because my informants in the region showed me the names. For my effort at trying to dissuade them from partaking of the fruit of the poisoned tree however, I was pilloried and bad-mouthed by some of those in the list now published by Hataw. Some friends within their circle however, I heard, stood up for me and threw at my critics the test of credibility and they shut up. To these kindred souls who defended me, like my inaanak, Ilet Breguera of Aksyon Radyo, my big thanks.

Even the board of Patrima led by Butch Velasco (yes, the newly confirmed Provincial Information Officer of Governor ‘Spines”), the media association to which I committed my own sweat, time and resources in its birth five years back, took me to task – mildly – for coming out with the unpleasant issue in this space before even asking those named for their side. But for what– to hear outright denials and feigned outrage by those tagged?

Now, I believe Patrima and the Ferrer-led Pangasinan PNP Press Corps have much to grieve over or at the very least, to explain.

Now I guess only the quotation here at the bottom of this page will assuage the feelings of those in the list who do not morally deserve to be so included in the horror roll.

* * * *
So naïve have been some of our local mediamen to think their jueteng patrons or hush money sources will be bound by a code of secrecy in the omerta tradition of the Sicilian Mafia. And that their neat, little dalliances with jueteng overlords won’t see the light of day.

I can only urge them, most of whom are my intimate friends and whom I know to be devoted fathers and mothers, to now cut and cut clean. Your smiling, accommodating, benevolent ever helpful jueteng bagmen are not the ‘friends” you make them out to be; they are your perdition.

Your best friends, as they say, could be your worst enemies because they can spill your guts inside out. Haven’t you heard of the Gretchen-Nadia feud? (Ooops… did I just betray my TV viewing pastime?)