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Gabriel L. Cardinoza

I had a chance to see former Gov. Oscar Orbos when he came to Dagupan City last week as guest of a business forum organized by a Christian group. It was one of those rare meetings we had since 1998. When he finished his term that year as Pangasinan governor, he had stayed in Manila most of the time, especially when he decided to pursue his television hosting of “Debate” over GMA 7. He would call me once in a blue moon but our conversations did not go beyond exchanging of hellos and how-are-yous. Then, he would hang up with his signature remark, “Anusan yo labat, a (Just be patient, okay)?”

I had only known of Manong Oca’s presence in the city that Monday morning when a friend, who happened to be one of the event’s organizers, called me. Mondays are usually busy days in the office and I had initially decided not to see him anymore. But I decided the last minute to run to the astrodome shortly before the lunch break just to take a short glimpse of him and maybe to shake his hands.

Manong Oca has hogged the headlines in the immediate the past days because of what Malacanang called a coup attempt and the take over of a transition council, where he was supposed to be one of the members who had asked AFP Chief of Staff Generoso Senga to withdraw his support from President Arroyo. Weeks before, Manong Oca was also in that protest march to Malacanang where he, former Vice President Tito Guingona, Sen. Jamby Madrigal and other political leaders in the country were hosed by firemen to disperse them.

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Gabriel L. Cardinoza

After three months, the provincial government is finally taking a decisive action against the owner of the barge that spilled some 300 metric tons of coal in the waters off the coastal village of Macaboboni in Agno town.

Last Friday, provincial administrator Virgilio Solis has given the Malabon-based Asian Shipping Lines ten days to remove its 900-foot landing craft transport Aisner from the area or face legal action.

The barge was on its way to the Philippine National Oil Company in San Fernando City, La Union from Semirara, Antique to deliver 4,500 metric tons of coal when strong waves forced it to a coralline area of the Agno Bay and got stuck there.

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Gabriel L. Cardinoza
 
At the height of the stand off at the Marines headquarters in Fort Bonifacio last week, a good crowd gathered at the Leisure Coast Resort in Bonuan Binloc not to support an embattled Marine Col. Ariel Querubin but to watch a fashion show featuring Pangasinan’s important people, who are models in their own fields.
 
The fashion show, “06 Fashion Revolution,” was actually a fund-raising activity of the Pangasinan-Washington Sister State Association (Pawassa), a group organized in 1996 as a counterpart organization of the Seattle-based Washington-Pangasinan Sister State Association (Wapssa), for the benefit of its 32 Pangasinan State University scholars.
 
Pawassa is headed by Celia Lambino, wife of Vice Gov. Oscar Lambino, while the Wapssa president is Alma Quintans-Kern, a successful buisness person in Washington State . It was Ms. Kern who initiated the scholarship program about five years ago and so far, there have been several “poor but deserving” students who have finished their courses.

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Gabriel L. Cardinoza
 

THURSDAY and Friday last week may have been the longest two days this year for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Despite her composed and firm image when she addressed the country on television last Friday, she showed signs of fatigue – and anger. It was quite obvious that she just had a sleepless night, maybe to figure out with her closest advisers how to deal with the crisis that never was.
 
As I listened to her, I wondered how the President reacted when she was told that Scout Ranger Gen. Danilo Lim had withdrawn his support from her. I wondered if at all she entertained the thought of losing her seat. Did she tremble? Did she panic that she immediately summoned her tactless chief of staff Mike Defensor to do thinking and talking for her? Did she yell “punyeta” to anyone she saw in Malacanang?
 
In restrospect, the President’s declaration of a state of emergency may have been an overreaction.

No one, not even Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales, could cite a good reason for the declaration, sending signals to progressive and activist groups that Malacanang had acted whimsically, too aftraid of its own shadows that it wanted to fill every street with soldiers in their full battle gears as prelude to Martial Law. As usual, it was only Mike Defensor who had the storyline, the plot and some unnamed characters that would make a good action tele-novela.
 
The other funny thing during last Friday’s “crisis” was when PNP Chief Art Lomibao ordered the transfer of former President Joseph Estrada from a hospital in San Juan where he is scheduled for an eye surgery to a “safer ground.” It was 3 a.m., a fuming Erap said in a radio interview. They came knocking hard on my door and even kicking it. But I refused to go with them, he added.
 
To say that Erap was unsafe in his own hometown, where the incumbent mayor is his son and where he also served as mayor for a long time, is simply preposterous. We recognize that it was the PNP’s responsibility to ensure Erap’s safety but at that moment, they could have immediately thought that Erap couldn’t have been safer right in his own house. Common sense.
 
Despite the state of emergency rule and the declaration of no rally zones, protesters asking the President to resign defied it. They marched in EDSA, at one point triggering a violent confrontation between the rallyists and the policemen. UP Prof. Randy David was even arrested while he was negotiating with a police general. Then, of course, former President Cory Aquino dared Malacanang to arrest her by leading the protest-march in Ayala to commemorate the 20 th year anniversary of the EDSA Revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship and to once again ask the President “to make the supreme sacrifice by resigning from the presidency.” Cory was not arrested.
 
As the last protester left Ayala last night, Malacanang declared that it’s over. In fact, they have done it earlier in the day by announcing that the military has thwarted at coup attempt.
 
If it’s really over, why not lift the state of emergency? Why the threats of arrests of civilian plotters and financiers?
 
The tension during last Friday’s “crisis” has certainly dissipated. President Arroyo still sits as President and to her supporters, “tuloy ang ligaya!” Gen. Danny Lim’s “defection”, however, must be one lesson Malacanang should find time to analyze. His action was not just a simple political exercise or military insubordination. Not even, as Malacanang loves to call it, “military adventurism.”
 
It’s time Malacanang starts listening hard to the people.

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Gabriel L. Cardinoza

Until now, the controversial photo showing Alaminos City Mayor Nani Braganza seated beside President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo during the opening of the Private Schools Athletic Association national games in Lingayen town is still the talk of the town, and lately, of the cyberspace.

This is because the photo, which was published in the sports page of the Philippine Star two weeks ago, was digitally tampered. Those who covered the PRISAA opening – and the photos taken by other photographers – attest that Nani was never seated beside the President. He was in fact in the upper tier of that grandstand and was seated beside Dagupan City Mayor Benjamin Lim at that time. The President then was sandwiched by Gov. Victor Agbayani (to her right) and PRISAA chair, Dr. Emmanuel Angeles.

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Gabriel L. Cardinoza

This week, Pangasinan will host some 5,000 athletes and sports officials who will be participating in this year’s Private Schools Athletic Association national games.

In the 53-year history of the PRISSA, this is the first time for the national games to be held in the province. “Maybe, they didn’t believe we can host a big event like this,” said former Vice Gov. Gonzalo Duque, now president of the Lyceum Northwestern University.

In fact, he added, he had offered the province to the PRISAA board as a national games venue three years ago. But it was only last year — during the PRISAA games in Zamboanga City — that the board finally considered his proposal and agreed to have the games here this year.

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Gabriel L. Cardinoza
 

Manny Pacquiao is home. And for a day, a proud, cheering nation welcomed him with warmth and admiration. For a day, political word wars were put to a halt; and for a day, the people forgot all their troubles and worries.
 
But poor Manny. From the time he disembarked from the Philippine Airlines flight that took him from LA to Manila to the late hours of that Friday night, he was literally tortured, defenselessly taking all the beatings when he was paraded in the streets of Manila and Quezon City and made to appear in before various private audiences, including live television interviews. He might have feigned he enjoyed the limelight because by sundown, in one television show, he was already talking like a broken record – a sure sign that fatigue has set in.

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Gabriel L. Cardinoza

Will the ameneng (hataw, video karera) machines finally go for good? We ask because with the high-profile campaign against these illegal gaming machines, with no less than Gov. Victor Agbayani and Mayor Benjamin Lim ordering the police to confiscate these on sight, we can only imagine its operators running in all directions with their machines in tow, putting an end to a vice that have been luring school-aged children.

As of this writing, Dagupan City police chief Ed Basbas was announcing on television that his operatives have already confiscated 31 such machines from the different barangays of the city. Good catch, so far. But we also heard him say that there may be more machines hidden inside many houses and that they would need search warrants to get them.

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By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

WHILE walking along the tiled pavement fronting the CSI Square one midday, I saw a blind man on his knees facing the smooth walls of one corner of the elevated decorative flower boxes just a few meters away from the fountain and the pedestrian lane at the corner of Galvan St..

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By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

ENG’R. Betty Olivar, a faculty member of the University of Pangasinan, was returning to Dagupan City that night of Dec. 30 after visiting her relatives in her hometown in Isabela. She was just minutes away from the city and it was almost midnight. She was looking forward to finally get home and get a good rest after that long Victory Liner trip.

Then the unthinkable happened. While the bus was cruising that unlighted portion of the national highway in Sta. Barbara with full mango trees on both of its sides, she thought she heard a dull thud. Then she felt pain in her left eye. She’d been hit. Somebody had just stoned her bus and it went straight to her.

At the hospital minutes later, doctors found her eye crushed. She lost it.

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