It's your weekly compendium of foolishness and corruption and murder in Philippine politics.
Armed with search warrants, police raided the houses of Calamba Barangay Captain Victor “Jojo” Quijano, Barangay Councilman Ramsy “Winston” Abello Mercado and barangay tanod (village watchman) Anthony Polpol Gingoyon based on information that they had been seen carrying firearms.
Chief Inspector Chuck Barandog, who led the City Force Mobile Company of the Cebu City Police Office that conducted the operation, said their searches were positive.
An inventory is still being done to determine the firearms found in their houses.
But based on the search warrant for Gingoyon, the police were looking for an unlicensed caliber 38 revolver. The search in Mercado’s house involved a caliber 45 pistol.
Only two little pistols? That is nothing compared to the high-powered weaponry and grenades found in some houses.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has yet to issue an official statement on reports that the Philippine's Acting Ambassador to Germany has been summoned by the German Foreign Ministry to explain the tweets of Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Boy Tocsin.
Henze also posted on his account several screenshots of Locsin's past tweets comparing the administration's anti-drug campaign to the actions of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
Arnd Henze apparently recently had an interview with Locsin where he compared Duterte to Hitler and then old tweets surfaced where this same comparison was made. Germany's lack of free speech and inquiry regarding Hitler and the holocaust combined with Locsin's dumb off-the-cuff tweets make it hard to know who to get behind. They both suck.
Duterte said that unlike former President Fidel Ramos, who was given special authority to solve the country's electricity woes, he was not granted extraordinary powers by lawmakers to solve Edsa's traffic problem.
"Wala akong pangako na hindi ko natupad except 'yang EDSA (I did not make promises I did not keep except solving the traffic woes in EDSA)," Duterte said during a campaign sortie of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan in Laguna last Saturday.
Duterte lamented that the proposal to grant him emergency powers was met with suspicion by critics who believe it would be prone to corruption.
Two things here. One: While Duterte has fulfilled some of his promises like raising the pay of the PNP he has failed on his biggest promise which is to end drugs and crime in six months. He also never jet skied to the Spratly Islands to plant the flag or at least embarked on policies which reflect that spirit. Instead drugs and crime and corruption remain rampant and China has taken over the WPS.
Two: Ramos was given special powers to solve the country's electrical problems yet these problems still persist. Thinking that being given special emergency powers to deal with the traffic situation is foolish and reveals Duterte's mindset. What is needed are not strong-arm tactics but a deep cultural change where people start obeying the traffic rules for one thing and then a program of improving the infrastructure road by road including clearing the roads of all obstructions and getting slow vehicles like tricycles off the roads.
Construction of a major stretch of the main road of Boracay Island has yet to start even as an increasing number of tourists are coming to the popular island-resort.
The road from the area near the Elizalde property leading to Barangay Yapak at the northern end of the island is still difficult to use due to excavations for the widening of the road and upgrading of drainage and sewage pipes, according to residents.
One of they key components of the rehabilitation was the upgrading and widening of the 20-kilometer road network of the island.
But construction is still in the completion stage of the first phase of the project covering 4.12 km with a budget of P490 million.
The second phase, which will cover 3.3 km, has a budget of P300 million.
Boracay was closed in April which was 10 months ago. That means it has taken 10 months to build 4.12 km of road! There are 16 km left to build which means, if it takes 10 months to build 4 km, another 40 months or 3 and 1/2 years are left to this project! Why was Boracay reopened if it's not even ready? What was the point?
"We are facing a serious problem. Pumasok na ang cartel Medellin [ng] Colombia kaya nga maraming nakikitang cocaine," Duterte said.
Duterte said illegal drugs were being produced in old trawlers, then attached to GPS devices before being thrown into the sea.
The illegal packages would then be traced and retrieved by drug traffickers.
He said it would be very challenging to guard the country's entire shoreline to prevent the entry of illegal drugs.
"We are in danger dahil on the right side, ang Mexico, ang Medellin, Colombia, pumapasok. Dito kung makikita mo lumulutang shabu, cocaine. At mahirap ang Pilipinas dahil pinakamahabang shoreline," Duterte said.
The drug war is going great. Almost eradicated.
“The President’s policy on Chinese workers who are illegally staying in the country remains the same, which is the enforcement of immigration laws against violators,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement. “Our laws will be applied with full force and effect equally to all foreign nationals who violate them.”
In a speech in Biñan City, Laguna, on Saturday, the President said he would not deport Chinese workers in the country, saying that this might affect the Filipinos working in China.
“The Chinese here, just let them work here. Just let them. Why? We have 300,000 Filipinos in China,” the President said, speaking in mix Filipino and English during the campaign rally of the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban).
Panelo said: “Chinese workers who have working permits and compliant with immigration rules and do not violate the laws of the land will be accorded the protection they are entitled to.”
“Enforcement of the immigration laws, however, doesn’t mean that we shall act recklessly on perceived violations of Chinese citizens,” he added. “To do so would be a dangerous policy as we have, as the President stressed in his campaign rally speech, thousands of Filipinos in China and its government might enforce a policy of tit for tat to the detriment of our countrymen in China.”
This issue of illegal Chinese workers keeps building steam and it seems is about to boil over. Duterte says he does not want to deport these illegal workers because there are 300,000 Filipinos working in China and if the Philippines enforced its immigration laws the Chinese might get mad and kick out the Filipinos. But if the Filipinos are working illegally the should be sent home too. Plenty of foreigners are kicked out of the Philippines every year for being rude to BI officials or working illegally and it should be a no brainer to deport any Chinese working illegally.
The indictment stemmed from statements Trillanes made against President Rodrigo Duterte after the latter issued a proclamation revoking his amnesty in connection with his involvement in the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny and the 2007 Manila Penisula Siege.
What the remarks are this article does not say. How many cases are pending against Trillanes now? Too many!
Two policemen in Cebu City are now in hot water after they were caught selling firearms, one of whom was even in uniform.
Operatives from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Central Visayas (CIDG-7) arrested PO1 Oliver Baguio Navarro and PO2 Redzon Baguion in an entrapment operation at 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday, February 26, in front of a hotel in F. Ramos Street, Cebu City.
Recovered from the suspects were three firearms – a 45 pistol, a 22 revolver, and a 38 revolver, a P25,000 marked money, and several live ammunition.
Committing crimes while in uniform. Can it get any stupider?
“We will initiate an investigation kagaya mo and I will subpoena your mother sa ayaw mo’t sa hindi. Baka sabihin mong walang power, there is. We also have the contempt power but we have to go to court,” Duterte said in a speech at the general assembly of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines in Manila.
Duterte in September accused Trillanes' mother, Estelita, of having supply transactions with the Philippine Navy when Trillanes and his father were still in the military service.
The senator hit back at Duterte, accusing the chief executive of dragging his 84-year-old mother, who is suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease, into their political squabble.
Who is we? Does Duterte even have power to launch an investigation and subpoena anyone? Likely just another empty threat.
President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to shut down PLDT Inc if the telecommunication giant won’t set up more trunk lines to accommodate calls to a citizens’ complaint line for reporting corrupt government workers.
“If you see corruption, tell me. Call 8888. Bong, add another trunk line. The present setup can’t accommodate all the calls. It’s always busy. Tell PLDT. If not, I’ll shut down their business,” Duterte said.
Bong is Christopher Go, who has officially resigned as presidential aide to run for senator.
“Oo, that’s true. I don’t want to brag, but they owe government P8 billion. No president has ever asked for payment. But when I became president, I said…,” he added without elaborating.
Which is worse: that there is so much corruption that the line is always busy or that PLDT owes P8 billion and no one wants to make them pay?
“Now there is Misuari, he saw me last night. He was not allowed by the court to go out because he has pending charges when he was armed,” Duterte said in a speech before the general assembly of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines in Manila.
“I had to make some arrangements. Sabi ko, this is a personal request of me, which I do not do at any time, at any other time. Sabi ko, papasukin --- ah palabasin ninyo,” he added, without saying the names of people whom he had made arrangements with.
Misuari met with Duterte in Malacañang on Monday, a day before the MNLF leader’s scheduled trip to the United Arab Emirates.
On Tuesday, the Sandiganbayan Third Division released its February 20 resolution granting Misuari’s request to attend the 48th Session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Council (OIC) of Foreign Ministers and the 14th Session of the Parliamentary Union of Islamic Cooperation (PUIC) Member States to be held in the UAE and Morocco, respectively, in March.
The court said his trip to the summits affirmed his important role in the peace process in Mindanao.
It's quite clear Duterte made arrangements with the Sandiganbayan and despite his plea that he does not do this at any time the independence of this court is now thrown into question. From the comment section on this same story in the Inquirer:
Oh for fcuk sake. This is too much even for this banana republic. How do you have an elected senator behind bars without a trial for two years, another senator charged with inciting to inciting to revolt (no, I'm not stuttering, that's what the charges are), but self confessed terrorist is free to leave the darn country? WTF is going on here?!
President Rodrigo Duterte said the alleged ill-gotten wealth amassed the Marcos family during then president Ferdinand E. Marcos’ 20-year reign has not been proven to this day.
“Until now, you have not proven anything except to sequester and sell. Hindi mo nga sigurado kung talagang kay Marcos ba ‘yan?” Duterte said in his speech at the general assembly of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines in Manila.
(It cannot even be confirmed if such were really owned by the Marcoses.)
The Marcos family has allegedly amassed ill-gotten wealth believed to be worth from US$5 billion to US$10 billion through dummies and cronies.
The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), formed in 1986 primarily to recover the supposed ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses, has reported that it had recovered P170.45 billion from 1986 to December 2015.
What an absurd and dangerous lie. All his supporters will eat this up because they believe what he says without question. The facts are that the Narcoses have been linked to ill-gotten wealth via Swiss banks, the conviction of Imleda Marcos last year, and the recovery of billions over three decades. Read about it all
here.
Former senator and now Senate aspirant Bong Revilla is claiming that the “yellows” are spending P50 million to “target” him.
“May mga nagpaabot sa akin, at sa totoo lang ayaw kong maniwala, na may umiikot ngayong 50 million para targetin ako,” he said in a statement on Sunday.
“Pero sa grabe ng mga atake galing sa mga yellow social media, hindi mahirap paniwalaan. At parang natural lang naman na ipagpatuloy nila ang paninira at fake news sa akin. Binully ako ng 6 na taon, at hanggang ngayon binu-bully nila ako,” he added.
While he was acquitted, the Office of the Ombudsman lodged a motion for execution of judgment saying that Revilla should still return P124.5 million as part of his civil liability.
However, the former senator tagged this as “fake news.”
“Hindi totoo na may pinapasauli sa akin ang Korte. Fake news yan at pambubully,” he said.
Does anyone need to spend money to smear Bong Revilla? He only barely escaped a conviction but the court still ruled he has to pay that money back anyway. Duterte even dropped him from his slate! Revilla is toxic.
President Duterte’s critics, not his rhetoric, should be blamed for death threats on Catholic clerics, Malacañang said yesterday.
Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said the opposition made a big deal out of Duterte’s “hyperbole” that drug addicts should rob and kill moneyed bishops.
“If one is a drug addict, it doesn’t matter to him who endorsed. You know, drug addicts are crazy... Their brains have been affected so there is no need for encouragement from anyone to do something bad against a person,” Panelo said at a press briefing.
“If it’s hyperbole, then it’s not an encouragement. It is only the opposition, the critics who make it so. That is precisely why they should be blamed for that, not him,” he added.
In one of his speeches last month, Duterte called on drug addicts to rob and kill bishops, whom he described as “useless.” Catholic bishops are critics of Duterte’s bloody war on drugs.
But on Monday, Duterte warned he would not let anyone harm or kill bishops. He said Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle had informed him of death threats on prelates coming from unnamed individuals supposedly close to the President. Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David confirmed he had been receiving death threats from unknown people since two weeks ago.
“That is precisely why he warned those who will harm the priests. And he’s serious on that because this President is outraged by any kind of irregularity or violation of any law or any threat made against any person,” the spokesman said.
Asked if he thought Duterte should refrain from using “hyperbole” to avoid endangering lives, Panelo said: “Our countrymen have been used to this President’s style of delivering his responses, his remarks, so I don’t see any problem with that.”
It's simply unconscionable that the President keeps telling citizens to kill priests, mayors, and drug addicts. It's utterly hypocritical that when people turn up dead, like mayors and drug addicts, that we are told not to blame Duterte's violent and encouraging rhetoric.
Most Filipinos believe police officers are involved in extrajudicial killings, the illegal drug trade, and planting of evidence against drug suspects, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed Wednesday.
Of 1,440 respondents in the December survey, 66 percent said the allegation that police officers are involved in executing drug suspects are "definitely or probably true," while 28 percent said they are "undecided." Five percent said it was "definitely or probably not true."
Belief in police involvement in drug killings is highest in Metro Manila at 72 percent, followed by Balance Luzon at 67 percent, and Visayas and Mindanao at 63 percent each.
The government loves to tout the latest SWS survey which says that 4 out of 5 Filipinos support the drug war as if that justifies everything about it. What will they do with this survey? Dismiss is as fake news?
Duterte-Carpio, campaign manager of HNP, said the opposition party was depressing because of their obsession on the debate.
“Bara-bara. Very unprofessional and then ngayon uutusan ako? I am the chairman of HNP tas gagawin akong secretary nung grupo na merong obsessive disorder or fixation sa debate,” she said.
Debates are standard parts of elections around the world so what is the problem? Even the Philippine presidential candidates had a debate in 2016.
Former Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco, Jr. “waited” for his “execution” here after a provincial high ranking official threatened to hang him on a flagpole on Thursday.
But Evasco, who was running for governor in May, was left hanging since provincial administrator Ae Damalerio didn’t arrive.
The controversy started when Evasco accused Damalerio and Bohol Gov. Edgar Chatto of protecting illegal drugs trade in Bohol.
Evasco was in Hong Kong to attend a gathering of the Boholano community when he revealed the drug proliferation in Bohol and the alleged inclusion of some provincial officials in President Duterte’s drug matrix.
Damalerio denied the allegation, calling it “political propaganda with hot air that has no proof nor basis.”
He dared Evasco to present his evidence on Feb. 28.
Damalerio said he would hang Evasco in the flagpole in front of Maribojoc town hall if he failed to present his proof.
When Damalerio didn’t arrive, Evasco did a ceremonial hanging by tying a rope around his neck.
But the “execution” didn’t happen. Evasco was also not able to produce his evidence against the provincial administrator.
When reached for comment, Damalerio said Evasco’s actuation proved that he had no evidence against him and the governor.
He stressed that the police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency had cleared him of any involvement with illegal drugs.
“My statement was very clear, if he failed to produce evidence, then it only means he capitalized on it, to translate (it) into political propaganda,” Damalerio said a text message to the Inquirer.
Absolutely stupid. A ridiculous stunt.
With President Rodrigo Duterte now pegging the number of drug users in the Philippines at a new high of 7 to 8 million, the Philippine National Police (PNP) admitted on Wednesday, February 27, that it did not know where his numbers came from.
Asked during an ambush in Camp Crame, PNP chief Director General Oscar Albayalde, said the president "has unlimited sources of information."
“Well, it’s because we saw that drug users are really non-stop, although we really do not know where the President get[s] the statistics, because he, as we said, has unlimited sources of information,” said Albayalde.
Duterte's latest number is even way beyond the 1.8 million estimate in 2016 of the government’s official policymaking body on the drug war, the Dangerous Drugs Board.
Does this mean that the anti-drug campaign is failing? Albayalde said he does not think so. He downplayed the President’s estimate— and even the act of making estimates.
“'Yung 7 million kasi, baka ngayon lang lumabas 'yan. It's probably baka noon pa ganyan na. An estimate kasi is all an estimate. 'Yung estimate natin, estimate lang yan, even the 3 million na sinasabi nung una, we are not really sure kung 3 million ‘yan,” Albayalde said.
(The 7 million, maybe that only came out now, but probably that’s what has been even before. It’s because an estimate is all an estimate. Our estimate is just an estimate. Even the 3 million mentioned earlier, we are not sure if that is really 3 million.)
After a three year bloody drug war in which thousands have died Duterte now adjusts his statistics and adds 7 million more drug users to his former guess of 1.8 million and the PNP has no idea where he pulled that figure from and admits their earlier estimate of 3 million was just a guess. I am sure we can all guess where both the PNP and Duterte pulled their information from. Every single time Duterte touts some outrageous statistic or accuses someone of being involved in drugs the PNP shrugs their shoulder and says, "Eh, Duterte has unlimited sources of information." Thus admitting that they are utterly incompetent and know less than him or that Duterte is basically making it all up. So now that there are an unconfirmed 7 to 8 million drug users in the Philippines what course of action is to be taken?
“We need to reassess and recalibrate all (our) actions kasi (because) this will incorporate rehabilitation, and not just pure law enforcement,” PDEA Spokesperson Derrick Carreon said in a briefing in Camp Crame.
Carreon did not question the President’s estimate, claiming that Duterte, as Chief Executive, has a “wealth of reliable sources.”
He added that the agency, like the Philippine National Police (PNP), will take Duterte’s remark as a “challenge” to improve their campaign against illegal drugs.
A challenge to improve their campaign against illegal drugs. Translation: prepare for more dead bodies.
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