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Retired PNP chief now Pangasinan jueteng lord-Bishop

BLURBAL THRUSTS

Louie Logarta

05/22/2008

During the lunch the other day tendered by the National Press Club in one of the function rooms of the Lucio Tan-owned Century Park Hotel in honor of Philippine National Police Deputy Director General Jesus Verzosa (said to be the odds-on choice of Malacañang as successor to PNP chief Sonny Razon who is slated to retire at the end of September), someone tried to order a cold bottle of beer from the waiter; San Miguel Light (SML) was what he wanted.

But the guy was politely told off that SML wasn’t available because it was the official policy of the hotel not to offer something that was a direct market competitor of Asia Beer, another Lucio Tan company. So he finally had to content himself with a can of Coor’s beer, which was an Asia beer brew.

Now I do recall that during the Christmas party last December 2007 hosted by the corporate communications people of Philippine Airlines (PAL), again another Lucio Tan-owned company, at the Sulo Hotel in Quezon City for members of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP), beer was literally flowing like an uncapped oil rig in the desert, hundreds of bottles of it. But alas it was San Miguel Beer that the guests were guzzling to their hearts content, and not a solitary Asia Beer bottle in sight. Not even one.

I can just picture the smirk on El Kapitan’s wrinkled face if somebody had told him about this. The shit would have hit the fan. Imagine, PAL’s public relations budget being splurged on San Miguel Beer, of all things. A mortal sin, no less.

Unlike many of his predecessors, Education Secretary Jesli Lapus appears to have hit it off quite well with the men and women who are his subordinates, which is why they are standing solidly behind him as he tries to address the three most pressing concerns that have plagued the department for the longest time: textbook shortage, large class size and poor repair and maintenance of school buildings and classroom facilities.

In the three years since he assumed the reins of the DepEd, Secretary Lapus has made it his advocacy to somehow solve these problems by reducing class size through the provision of more classrooms coupled with the creation of more teaching positions; increasing the ratio of uniform textbooks to one book per pupil; cutting drastically on construction of new schools, and focusing more on the repair and maintenance of existing ones; and striving for global competitiveness through the introduction of a cyber education program.

He has put to good use his being a former member of the House of Representatives because his budget proposal for 2008, the biggest in the entire bureaucracy, has been referred to the Bicameral Conference Committee with no deletions whatsoever. In fact, the House appropriations committee even increased motu propio the funding for some of the line items he suggested.

By gracing the well-attended thanksgiving party thrown by the victorious Press Freedom Party for its supporters last Friday, Roman Floresca, the defeated presidential standard bearer of the Reform Party, finally put closure to the biennial elections of the National Press Club.

The said NPC polls turned out to be one of the most contentious and acrimonious in recent years, thanks in great part to the rumored participation of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) which were speculated to have allegedly pumped in some P2 million for the campaign expenditures of certain selected candidates (not from the Press Freedom Party).

Floresca, who was accompanied by Reform Party colleagues Delfin Perez and Leonel Abasola, endeared himself to the Press Freedom Party crowd as he went around congratulating all the winners, drinking some wine and partaking of the food that had been prepared for the joyous occasion.

The controversial Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz has confirmed what we had been saying all along – that jueteng, the illegal numbers game that has been around since the Spanish era — is alive and kicking in the country despite the contrary claims of national police officials, most notably General Razon in Camp Crame.

As a matter of fact, he said that the area coordinator for his populous home province of Pangasinan and the neighboring provinces is allegedly, would you believe, a retired PNP chief whose main task is to “kick upstairs” the huge protection money being paid monthly to Malacanang by the various jueteng underbosses who’ve been awarded their own franchise territories where they can conduct business without any outside interference.