It's your weekly compendium of foolishness and corruption and murder in Philippine politics.
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President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday slammed Senator Richard Gordon for criticizing his decision to appoint former military officials in his government.
Duterte said tapping retired military men was not illegal and that he can “move faster” with his programs “with honesty.”
He called Gordon a “smart ass” who walks like a penguin.
“Do not be too presumptuous about your talent. Why do you criticize me? It’s my prerogative. It is not prohibited by law," the President said in a speech at the 28th founding anniversary of the Bureau of Fire Protection in Pasay City.
Childish name calling.
Retired police and military generals have cornered Small Town Lottery (STL) franchises from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), and they are among those who have not been remitting the government’s share of the earnings, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said on Thursday.
In the Senate, Lacson said he favored the scrapping of STL, which has been used as front for the illegal numbers game “jueteng.”
The termination of STL would remove a gray area and make it easier for law enforcers to arrest jueteng bet collectors, he said.
“No [jueteng operation] would masquerade as a legal operation of STL. They would have nowhere to hide. So for me this is better because if the government is being cheated massively, if it is being fooled brazenly, maybe we should remove STL,” Lacson told reporters.
Not very shocking. Even PNP Chief Albaylde warned cops who are involved in jueteng. It would not be out of character for former PNP generals to be involved with illegal numbers games.
In an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel, Eleazar said 24 of the police offices are on sidewalks, six are on center islands, while five are encroaching public roads.
There were initially 37 police offices within Metro Manila that were obstructing public roads, but two of them — a PCP in San Juan City and a Compac in Malabon City — were already demolished, the NCRPO said.
Eleazar said however the NCRPO cannot just remove the precincts without ensuring relocation sites.
“We do not want to sacrifice or compromise the peace and order in the locality,” he said.
While the order of President Rodrigo Duterte is to reclaim public roads being used for private purposes, Eleazar said the NCRPO decided to also demolish its precincts and compacs that are obstructing roads to serve as an example to the public.
(We still have to correct it. These offices have been there since the 80s and was not flagged. For whatever reason reason that it was there and since there was no strong political will in the past, [we still have to demolish it].)
The PNP think they are doing the public a favour by being an example in demolishing these precincts even though they were no under obligation to do so even though they should never have been there in the first place. And they have to the gall to say we have to find a relocation sites when they have had 30 years to correct the problem!!
Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea has filed libel charges against Special Envoy for Public Diplomacy to China Ramon Tulfo over an alleged malicious article published in the Manila Times.
“He was the one who announced it,” he said in a text message, referring to Tulfo.
“All I can say is there will be more coming,” he added.
Medialdea said the libel complaint was filed last June.
“I just kept quiet about it. I filed it because I just wanted to correct what he was wrongfully and maliciously writing about me and to set out the truth,” he said.
“His motivations will come out in the future. I don’t want them to affect my case at the moment,” he added.
In his letter, Medialdea disputed Tulfo’s column published in The Manila Times titled “Self-purgation should start with the Cabinet.”
In his column, Tulfo claimed that a Felicito Mejorado told him that he has not yet received the P272.07 million in reward money owed to him by the government for his tip on a smuggling operation in Mariveles, Bataan, in 1997.
Tulfo said Mejorada told him that his claim for his reward had been pending with Medialdea’s office for one year.
Tulfo's accusation is that Medialdea's office has not issued a payment. Medialdea denies this accusation and his plan was to file a libel suit instead of publicly setting the record straight. But that is how it is in the litigious Philippines.
And now for three connected stories regarding alleged extortion and the alleged discovery of a new smear campaign against Duterte's men.
A suspected extortionist, who was nabbed by the Philippine National Police, linked on Thursday former Senator Bam Aquino and former Magdalo Representative Gary Alejano to an online smear campaign against candidates of the Duterte administration.
Dennis Borbon, who identified himself as an anti-Duterte blogger, said that Aquino's chief of staff paid him between P20,000 to P40,000 a month for the adverse online posts against President Rodrigo Duterte's candidates.
Borbon also claimed that he personally knew Peter Joemel Advincula, the man who claims to be the hooded Bikoy in anti-Duterte videos which implicated the First Family in illegal drug trade.
The arrest of an alleged con man has uncovered a bigger smear campaign in the May midterm elections that, Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go said, he was inclined to pursue because it made him strip twice in public.
Dennis Jose Borbon, 24, a former staff member of the party list group 1-Edukasyon, was arrested by police operatives on Wednesday in Malabon City while he was withdrawing from an automated teller machine the P15,000 he had allegedly extorted from Cavite Vice Gov. Ramon “Jolo” Revilla III.
Borbon, a blogger, claimed to own the Twitter account @roguehrepstaff. The PNP-ACG said he had been posing as Camarines Sur Rep. Arnulfo Fuentebella on Viber and extorting from P10,000 to P25,000 from several House representatives, local officials and senators.
Go claimed that Borbon had been hired by the chief of staff of then Sen. Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV to launch an online smear job against all administration candidates including himself during the election campaign.
But Aquino denied this. Describing Borbon as an attention-seeker (“kulang sa pansin”), Aquino said: “It is clear that Borbon is changing the narrative to make us forget the crimes he had committed. I had nothing to do with him. Let us not believe people like Borbon who’s a trickster and a scammer.”
Ejercito told INQUIRER.net in a text message that Borbon reached out to him three years ago.
In a Viber message to reporters, Ejercito said Borbon pretended to be a congressional staff.
“Pumunta sa office, nag volunteer to help me. Tapos uuwi daw muna Bicol. Nanghingi na nga ng pera agad para daw makauwi,” he said.
The former senator said Borbon kept in touch with him and his staff through text messages.
“He was asking for funds again for his work and operations. Since we were doubtful we didn’t send na,” Ejercito said.
It would appear that the alleged ouster plot and smear campaign by the opposition has just widened its net. But why would anyone trust men who are scammers? And if Ejercito knew these men were scamming him why did he not set them up for a fall? Everything about this set up stinks from the government promoting the testimony of admitted liars as truth to Bong Go appearing at the press conference.
The Sandiganbayan Sixth Division has ordered the suspension of Bogo City, Cebu Councilor Cresencio Verdida in relation to his pending graft charges involving the reported irregular disbursement of P20 million to the Bogo Municipal Employees Multi-Purpose Cooperative (BMEMPC).
In a resolution, the antigraft court ordered the 90-day suspension of Verdida for two counts of graft.
Verdida was the municipal accountant during the time the alleged offense took place.
The money, which came from the Department of Agriculture as part of the Ginintuang Agrikulturang Makamasa (GAM) program, was earmarked for agricultural and livelihood assistance for farmers, fishermen and other members of the marginalized sector.
However, instead of being allocated to the GAM program, the money was turned over to BMEMPC, which in turn allowed its members to use it through salary loans.
A disgusting way to screw over the poor.
The Commission on Audit (COA) has affirmed its earlier decision to disallow the Government Service Insurance System’s (GSIS) purchase of some P25.13 million in avian flu medicine in 2006.
The state audit body ruled that the purchase was unnecessary and irregular, and outside the GSIS’ mandate.
“The procurement of medicines for the treatment of avian influenza is a health-related function which belongs to the Secretary of Health who was designated by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the Crisis Manager for the Avian Influenza under Section 114 of EO No. 280,” the COA said.
How do such irregular purchases continue to get processed?
The Commission on Audit (COA) has called out Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) for the surge in the number of cases and claims of members, particularly those in Metro Manila and Rizal province, for pneumonia, acute gastroenteritis, urinary tract infection, sepsis and other diseases.
In a report issued in January, the COA said these conditions were “subject to abuse” since the benefit claims were made through PhilHealth’s electronic system.
State auditors said they wanted to know if PhilHealth had really conducted “prepayment medical review” on its members afflicted with the diseases regarded as “‘red flag,’ outliers with unusual increase in volume and claims.”
More PhilHealth shenanigans or are Filipinos getting more ill?
Las Piñas Mayor Imelda Aguilar warned the city’s 20 barangay chairs of “extreme consequences” should they fail to clear the streets in their areas of obstructions and illegal structures.
“You will be accountable to me if you fail to implement the rules [and] endanger the lives of our fellow Las Piñero,” Aguilar told the officials in a meeting last week.
Aguilar and her daughter, Vice Mayor April, also laid down their plans for clearing the city’s roads, particularly Alabang-Zapote Road.
The mayor’s directive came less than a week after the Department of the Interior and Local Government gave the 17 Metro Manila mayors 60 days to reclaim all public roads or risk facing sanctions.
The Aguilar's have ruled Las Piñas for decades. They are well connected to other political families. How long have the roads of Las Piñas been obstructed? But action is only being taken because of a directive from the DILG. This is what a dynasty looks like: families who only care about power but not the people or the city they govern.
The Manila City Regional Trial has found guilty a former army reservist for the death of a cyclist more than three years ago.
Vhon Martin Tanto has been sentenced to suffer imprisonment of up to 40 years and pay more than P1-million worth of damages to the family of cyclist Mark Vincent Garalde.
Garalde was killed in a road rage incident in Quiapo, Manila last July 25, 2016.
The best thing that can be said about this case is that is was resolved rather swiftly.
Santo Tomas, Davao del Norte Mayor Ernesto Evangelista ordered the creation of an Action Committee to address the PHP39 million worth of questionable projects reported by the Commission on Audit (COA).
In a statement on Monday, Evangelista described the findings as “disturbing” and which prompted for the creation of the committee to that public funds are not wasted "due to any inefficiencies or misuse."
Among the significant findings that COA noted in its 2018 audit report were the following: seven water projects amounting to PHP22.8 million has not been properly liquidated as of December 31, 2018, "resulting in the misclassification of account."
The second finding involved a road repair and maintenance projects totaling to PHP3.1 million that were not among the allocations set by the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) and Public Investment Program (PIP) but were charged to the town's 20 percent development fund.
Also included in the COA report are the "enforcement" collections amounting to PHP1,233, 468.82 that have not been remitted to the municipality.
That's a lot of irregularities. At least the Mayor is looking into the COA's report instead of ignoring it.
The Sandiganbayan Seventh Division has convicted former Nueva Ecija governor Tomas Joson III, his nephew former Quezon mayor Eduardo Basilio Joson, and ex-Bongabon mayor Amelia A. Gamilla of graft in relation to the anomalous donation of vehicles in 2007.
The graft charges were due to the anomalous donation made by Joson of a mobile clinic, a Toyota Revo, an Ford F150, and a Nissan Urvan to Eduardo.
He also donated a Nissan Terrano, and a Ford Expedition, among others, to the Municipality of Bongabon, which was accepted by Gamilla.
Anomalous donation of vehicles. That is an interesting charge.
Former Iloilo Rep. Augusto Syjuco Jr. has been asked to pay a fine of P17,000 after pleading guilty to the misuse of his P4.3 million Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF).
The Sandiganbayan First Division imposed the fine after approving a plea bargain petition for lower offenses filed by Syjuco and former Department of Agriculture (DA) Regional Director Eduardo Lecciones Jr., thus lowering the malversation and graft charges against them.
According to the decision dated July 23, Syjuco and Lecciones are each fined P10,000 for committing frauds against the public treasury, P1,000 for violating the Government Auditing Code, and P6,000 for failing as accountable officers to render account under the Revised Penal Code.
The case was filed in relation to Syjuco’s move to use his own foundation, Tagipusuon Foundation Inc., to obtain P4.3 million in government funds to finance his own chicken business.
This guy stole P4.3 million to finance his chicken business and the Sandiganbayan allowed him to cop a plea bargain, lower the charges, and pay a measly P17,000 fine. That is not justice. It however justice in the Philippines.
President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday said he would not allow himself to be jailed over the drug war killings under his presidency.
Speaking before newly appointed officials in Malacañang, Duterte said he would drag down to hell those who would try to put him behind bars.
“Sa drugs kadaming demanda ko, akala ng mga gago mapasok nila ako sa kulungan,” Duterte said. “Dalhin ko kayo sa impyerno bago ako papasok diyan.”
This was a complete turnaround from his earlier remark when he said that he was willing to be jailed for the alleged extrajudicial killings if there would be an “unlimited” conjugal visits.
Flip-flop.
The Commission on Audit (COA) has affirmed its notice of disallowance over a P39.99 million road rehabilitation and improvement project in Butuan City in the Caraga region.
From the P39.99 million funds used to repair the P-9 to P-14 segment of a road in Sitio Kauswagan in 2010, P19 million was disallowed by COA’s Regional Office in Region XIII as the project was supposedly not completed.
COA said the project was disallowed because the government officials claimed the project was already 100 percent complete as of June 2010, and final payment was made in May 2011. However, audit teams discovered in July 2011 that the project was still not finished, with excavated parts of the road left unused and not disposed properly.
This situation is almost a decade old and just now is anything being done about it even though it was known in 2011 that the local government lied about the status of the project.
True to his word that more would be coming, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea filed on Tuesday four more counts of libel against Special Envoy for Public Diplomacy to China and journalist Ramon Tulfo.
“Yes. [I filed] four counts,” Medialdea told INQUIRER.net in a text message.
He said he would do it and he did it. The madman!
Speaking before Filipino-Chinese businessmen in Malacanang, Duterte told the US: “You practically drove me into the waiting arms of the Chinese government.”
“You were the ones responsible, you had two congressmen there. Took the floor in US Congress to denounce me as a violator of human rights and everything. At hindi ninyo — pinigil ninyo ‘yung armas,” he added.
In 2016, the US State Department stopped the sale of some 26,000 assault rifles to the PNP after US legislators said they would oppose it over concerns about human rights violations in the Philippines.
After the arms deal fell through with the US, the country’s longtime military ally, Duterte said his government decided to look for other sources of firearms, which led him to China and and even Russia.
“What I am supposed to do? Then I went to Russia. Again, I talked to President Putin and he said, “No problem. Bigyan kita ng armas. Bigyan kita ng truck.” Ayan dumating,” Duterte said.
Even if this were true, and it is not because it is Duterte who stopped the sale of the weapons after hearing a report, it still does not excuse all his subsequent actions towards China in basically giving up the Philippines' rights in the WPS.
The Philippine National Police chief, Gen. Oscar Albayalde, kicked off on Tuesday the 30-day reform program for police officers.
The program, called Form Police, is a “more effective retraining program to correct misdemeanors and other less prohibited acts committed by errant police personnel,” Albayalde said at a press briefing.
It is not a punishment, but a “restorative approach at internal cleansing through a continuing retraining program,” starting from the 5,582 police officers with resolved administrative cases since July 2016 until June 20, 2019,” the PNP chief said.
Covered are police personnel with administrative cases not punishable with dismissal, “whose cases may still be corrected,” he added.
Oh wow surely this reform program will work this time.
The operations of the illegal numbers game “jueteng” have quickly dissipated after President Rodrigo Duterte stopped the Small Town Lottery (STL), Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said on Tuesday.
Authorities had long suspected that STL, one of the games supervised by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), has become a smokescreen for jueteng since the two lottery games have similar mechanics.
“For the first time, after the President declared ‘no STL’ and ‘no jueteng,’ nobody attempted to open jueteng operations until now,” Año told the Inquirer, adding that despite that, he had ordered that the illegal numbers game be monitored.
Sure it is completely believable that Duterte has absolutely stopped the long entrenched illegal numbers game jueteng after stopping the STL. What a joke.
The three police corporals, John Bu Ramirez Combis, Kinsman Gets Omolon, and Robert Gagatic Amascual, have been ordered to turn over their service firearms, PNP identification cards and badges, as they were confined at the CCPO headquarters in Camp Sotero Cabahug here.
Sinas said the confirmatory test conducted by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Central Visayas using Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) has confirmed the result of the initial drug test that the three policemen had drug residue in their bodies.
If you are wondering what GCMS is read here. That is pretty fancy stuff for any Filipino law enforcement agency. Will these cops also get the reform treatment or will they be dismissed from service?
She said Minority Leader Franklin Drilon proposed during the hearing that the polls be conducted in 2021, or a year before the 2022 national elections.
On the other hand, Marcos and Senator Bong Go wanted the polls to be postponed until after the national elections.
Marcos said it would be better if the Barangay and SK elections will be held around January or February 2023.
Why are these people always threatening to postpone the elections? There is absolutely no good reason for a postponement and it only benefits those who are in power.
A correspondent of the alternative online paper Northern Dispatch was shot in front of his house at around 6 pm Monday, August 5, in the capital town of Lagawe in Ifugao.
Brandon Lee was immediately brought to the hospital, the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance said.
He was hit 4 times in the body. He had just fetched his child from school when the attack happened.
The 37-year-old Lee is a paralegal volunteer for the Ifugao Peasant Movement (IPM) and was redtagged by the military in 2015.
Lee took over the job of Ricardo Mayumi at the IPM.
Mayumi, a known IP leader who stood against a hydropower project in Tinoc town also in Ifugao, was killed on March 2, 2018, in Ambabag village in Kiangan town.
Another journalist and volunteer offering farmers legal aid shot with the implication being that the AFP is behind it. Not assassinated. That will they try again?
Unlike in other countries where spouses can file for divorce as many times as they want, that option for ending a troubled marriage should be available only once for couples in the Philippines, according to two lawmakers.
Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson on Tuesday broached the idea of allowing “once-in-a-lifetime” divorce in the country, lest husbands and wives exploit the system by having “a Las Vegas-style drive-thru wedding and a drive-thru divorce.”
“You err once, you make amends; you err twice, you deserve to suffer,” Lacson said on Twitter.
Speaking to reporters, Lacson said he would suggest an amendment to make divorce a onetime thing. Under his proposal, the spouse who filed for divorce would not be allowed to remarry, but the one who did not file could do so.
“The former will think a million times before he or she files for divorce since you won’t be able to marry if you were the one who filed for divorce and it was granted,” he said.
“We don’t want to cheapen also the importance of marriage,” he added.
Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who was initially against divorce out of concern for the children, supported Lacson’s proposal, saying it would be beneficial to all parties concerned.
“It’s OK to make a mistake once. But the second time, it’s deliberate, it’s no longer a mistake,” Dela Rosa told reporters.
This proposal is stupid. If you are going to allow divorce then there is no reason to forbid any party form remarrying. Sen. Sotto thinks it owed be better to pass an annulment bill because many balk at the word divorce but there is no difference. The marriage is still dissolved. Better to just keep things the way they are which is horrible enough without divorce.
The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) made some P4.93 billion in risky investments in 2018, the Commission on Audit (COA) said in its annual audit report, adding that some officials documents were not notarized, exposing the amount to possible irregularities.
“Lapses in the selection of corporate bond investment totaling P14.345 billion were noted… exposing government funds to undue risk of loss,” said the report which did not name the specific companies or financial institutions that PhilHealth had invested in.
The audit agency noted other irregularities involving PhilHealth’s reserve funds, including unaudited financial statements, the lack of evaluation of the bond issuers’ capacity to pay interest on securities, and unethical investments, including one in a holding company engaged in power generation and distribution.
“The use of coal and oil requires minerals through mining… is among the ‘negative list’ of investments considered not ethically and socially responsible by PhilHealth,” the COA said.
Why is PhilHealth even investing money in any companies? They can barely manage the regular funds they receive from the budget without messing that up. Just imagine them running the universal healthcare program.
The Sandiganbayan’s Second Division has dismissed a P102-billion forfeiture case filed 32 years ago against the family of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and their cronies due to missing original copies of key documentary evidence.
The antigraft court said the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the agency in charge of recovering the dictator’s ill-gotten wealth and the plaintiff in the case, failed to prove its allegations that officials of Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), acting on orders of the Marcoses, extended loans to various shipping companies held by Marcos cronies.
“Plaintiff miserably failed to adduce evidence to hold defendants Ferdinand E. Marcos and Imelda R. Marcos liable. It saddens the court that it took more than 30 years before this case is submitted for decision and yet, the prosecution failed to present sufficient evidence to sustain any of the causes of action,” read the 67-page decision.
In dismissing the case, the antigraft court said there was not enough evidence to hold the Marcoses liable since the PCGG only provided photocopies of several documents that could have connected the Marcos couple to the ill-gotten wealth, including photocopies of Resolution No. 2125 by the Board of Governors of DBP approving a foreign loan of $32.7 million in favor of the Ecija, Fuga, Aklan, and Coron bulk carriers on July 26, 1978.
Likewise, documents that supposedly proved Marcos had used California Overseas Bank as a conduit were mere photocopies whose authenticity could not be guaranteed.
Total incompetence? Calculated dishonesty? Who knows but the PCGG had 32 years to get all the documents and all they could compile were photocopies which the court refuses to accept. But they settled with one of the defendants earlier by granting him immunity in exchange for various properties worth P3.25 billion which would seem to lend credence to these charges.
Police arrested a 70-year-old barangay tanod (village watchman) and his “business partner” in possession of P60,000 worth of illegal drugs in a buy-and-bust operation conducted a few minutes past 8 p.m. on Wednesday night, August 7, in Barangay Punta Princesa.
Police consider Jabonero as a high-value target because of his position in the barangay as a watchman.
Another barangay tanned caught dealing drugs.
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