By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

AS is usual in the post-event assessment of the magnitude of a mass action, it depends on who’s making it. If it’s from the joiners or sympathizers, it’s a big multitude; if it’s from the oppositors or the antis, it’s a dismal number. Knowing this, I did try to check and get confirmation from everyone — the participants, kibitzers, cops on post and outright and rabid oppositors to the rally — to arrive at a respectable (and moderately acceptable) figure from all the diverse estimates.

It’s gotta be a little less than 3,000 but a few warm bodies more than 2,500.

I’m talking about the crowd turnout in that Friday rally in Dagupan mounted by a Church-backed association, Agco la (loosely translated as I’m Fed Up) to show oneness with the Inter-Faith Rally that was held simultaneously in Makati City on the issue of corruption and moral reformation.

Certainly it was the Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan and some businessmen that made up the bulk of the marchers and rallyists after, according to reports, the religious schools excused their students from classes for them to attend the event.

A similar scenario is still etched in the mind back in 2000 when the same group led local mass actions against the then tottering Erap Estrada administration. That was quite a bigger crowd, I guess, gathered at the same site and mouthing similar sobra na, tama na lines, waving aloft angry placards and banging at Heaven’s doors to deliver the nation from one evil.

Only the main object of their collective dismay and derision has changed.

With last Friday’s peaceful outpourings of the disgruntled, are we witnessing the first stirrings of yet another civil unrest? How will it end this time – in peaceful retreat or surrender or in bloody confrontation? We can only pray

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Heard those light planes, Pipers and Cessnas, flying overhead in your part of the sky lately?

We’re not too sure of where they’re coming from or landing in but the fact that these droning machines have been hovering more frequently and ever so low now in our backyards seems to coincide with the opening of that flying school and airfield in Binalonan owned by the Guicos, relatives of the President.

Yes, we have a certified airfield now operating in Pangasinan (and we don’t mean the old grazing, er, airport stretch in Lingayen right near the provincial PNP headquarters) and air travel to us uninitiated, bus-riding folks of the boondocks has come that much closer to reality. Now, we will soon be flying high – if the long-term plans for that facility do not miscarry.

Binalonians and Pozorrubians swear the coming and going of low-flying planes is heard and seen more frequently now in those parts because of the airfield recently inaugurated by President Arroyo, no less.

Vice Mayor Ramon Guico III, the dashing figure behind the aviation company and a licensed pilot himself, has been helping train student pilots and aviation mechanics and even stewardesses of various nationalities. We saw some of these trainees during the Arroyo visit to the Guicos’ hangar and really, it was a virtual parade of nations in there. It can only mean those foreigners have faith and trust in our native aviation experts and technicians’ teaching skills and flying savvy they’re willing to put their money and lives, literally, in the latter’s hands.

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Whatta flurry of reactions we got from our last week’s column on the jueteng payola list among the local media practitioners!

The reactions ranged from great sadness, to outright denials to snickering taunts and brave challenges. A couple or so were, believe you me, in fact rejoicing at our piece. And all we ever did was to write about that list already printed in the tabloid Hataw by a lady columnist; a rather unoriginal take.

As we write this, another media colleague just came into our office bewailing how some of those ran over by the tabloid’s sticks-and-stones report were suspecting him to have fed the info to the tabloid writer and that unfairly, “they” have been getting back at him by feeding negative stories to his employer to destroy his credentials.

One of the most unfortunate reaction however could only be that one by a top broadcaster (actually one of our good friends, he) who ascribed the wrong motives for the action of those campaigning against the scandalous bribing of mediamen from jueteng intelehensiya, the street term for hush money. No, amigo, not everyone in this trade is lured or lives by filthy lucre and well you may only be speaking for yourself and that certain band of bagmen and bagwomen who all seem to have succumbed to a most infectious disease: abalositis masibamus.

If his views on the issue of payola for mediamen were really reflective of the entire local media community’s, I am therefore more than vindicated for having resigned my convenor position from that group. “Beyond redemption” na pala sila, to borrow Sunday Punch publisher Ermin Garcia’s term for those who lie thru their teeth.

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I can only wish Pangasinan Tri-Media Association (Patrima) president Butch Velasco, young and disbelieving as they come these days, all the luck. I hope his inner instinct on the issue of media corruption hereabouts (“Where’s the evidence?”) is enough to keep the listing ship afloat till the next club election, whenever that may be.

Be alert, Butch. Whatever you do, at least, do not be consumed.