It's your weekly compendium of foolishness and corruption in the Philippine government.
The chief-of-police in Argao town, Cebu was in hot water after he was found “sleeping” beside a 23-year-old female inmate inside his room at the municipal police station, while another female inmate was sleeping inside his office.
In a report submitted to Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Archie Gamboa, but was released to media on Friday, P/Col. Ronald Lee, acting director of the PNP-Integrity Monitoring and Enforcement Group (IMEG), identified the police official as Maj. Ildefonso Miranda Jr., who was arrested by anti-scalawag operatives in a raid Thursday.
“Major Miranda and (the female inmate) were found sleeping in one bed, while the other female inmate was deep in her slumber at the police chief’s office. This won’t be tolerated,” Lee said
“Reports had it that the 46-year old police official is having sexual relationship with the female inmate in exchange for her privilege to sleep in his air-conditioned office,” read an IMEG report.
The police chief was sleeping with the inmates. Now the whole department is being investigated.
According to Mariano, they will be investigating why no one from the police station reported about the unusual detention of Villanueva.
(All PUPCS should be in the denention cell. They should be accounted for. They should check in the morning and even before they sleep. So why didn’t they report this if this was going on for so long?)
Mariano expressed his dismay as there were constant inspection and reminders given to uphold the integrity of policemen in the province.
Probably didn't report it because they don't want to end up dead.
A barangay chairman of this town was gunned down on Wednesday.
Richard Roldan, 44, of Barangay Zone 2, was on a motorcycle on his way to Alcala town when he was fired upon by unidentified assailants in a gray Toyota Innova in Barangay Ketegan.
Another LGU official assassinated but this time the modus operandi is backwards. The victim was on a motorcycle while the assassins were in a car.
Police have launched a manhunt to find two motorcycle-riding gunmen who ambushed and injured a town councilor of Mamasapano, Maguindanao on Friday.
Lt. Col. Henry Banias, Mamasapano town police chief, said Councilor Mastura Bedtigilan Kamidsa, 47, of Barangay Tuka, was driving his Toyota Innova vehicle from the town hall heading for adjacent Shariff Aguak municipality when gunmen opened fire on him using M16 rifles at past 3 p.m.
Although injured, Kamidsa managed to continue driving his vehicle towards an Army detachment where he sought help. Soldiers rushed him to the Maguindanao provincial hospital in Shariff Aguak town.
“Responding soldiers and policemen found 14 empty shells for an M16 rifle at the ambush site,” Banlas said
Another LGU official almost assassinated.
The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) Executive Director Mel Georgie Racela told a Senate hearing last Thursday that P14 billion worth of transactions by POGOs from 2017 to 2019 were related to suspicious activities.
Most of the activities violated the E-Commerce Act while others involved drug trafficking, lack of legal or trade obligations, deviations from clients' profiles, funds not commensurate to the business or personal capacity of a client, lack of proper client identification, and fraud.
Despite the controversies surrounding POGOs, President Rodrigo Duterte still believes that the Philippines needs the revenues raised from the operations of the gambling entities.
"He (President Duterte) will not suspend it nor will he stop it," Panelo said in a radio interview.
"He told me the report of the PAGCOR (Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.) head was good, so OK. We need the funds coming from them," he added.
Panelo said several government projects and expenditures require funding including the higher salaries of nurses and teachers. He said revenues from POGOs may also be used to combat the spread of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
"Ngayon meron na naman tayong problema sa coronavirus, pwede rin nating pagkuhanan yun (Now that we have a problem due to the coronavirus, we can get funds from that)," the Palace spokesman said.
"All of these are possible. The money we can get from whatever source, that is supposed to be for the government. So the government can use that in any undertaking," he added.
The Philippines needs dirty Chinese money to fund the government but does not need American soldiers working alongside the AFP to fight terrorists.
A policeman was shot dead in Barangay East Rembo, Makati City on Monday morning.
According to Makati City Police chief Police Colonel Rogelio Simon, the victim was identified as Police Major Jeffrey Dalson.
Based on initial investigation, Dalson was inside his parked vehicle when a gunman riding a motorcycle fired at him.
Another cop assassinated.
A youth council chairman from the town of Las Navas, Northern Samar survived a gun attack by still unidentified men on Sunday (March 8).
The regional police said the target of the attack, Antonio Cubalan, 21, and youth council chairman of Santo Tomas village in Las Navas, was on his way home on his motorcycle when he and the suspects, who were on board another motorcycle, went on a race.
Another attempted assassination on an LGU official.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., the Philippines' top diplomat and an active Twitter user, might have some of his account features limited as his social media account has been locked, according to an activist whose group he said should be shot.
Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes Jr. posted a screenshot of a notification from Twitter Support after reporting Locsin's tweet against the group.
"Teddyboy Locsin, DFA secretary, has his Twitter account locked for this offensive and threatening tweet accusing Bayan as communists that deserve to be shot," Reyes tweeted Monday morning.
Locsin's last tweet was at 6:39 p.m. on Sunday.
A few days ago, the DFA chief reacted to an article where Bayan questioned why the Balikatan exercises would push through in May despite the termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States.
"These are fucking Communists. You shoot them. You don't listen to them," Locsin tweeted March 5.
DFA Secretary finally crossed the line on Twitter. But he'll be back and tweeting in no time.
Police arrested on Sunday afternoon a 32-year-old man who yielded over PHP1.3 million worth of shabu in Barangay Tampilong, Marawi City.
Col. Madzgani Mukaram, director of Lanao del Sur Provincial Police Office, said suspect Walid Nasser Usman, is supposed to be a jail guard of the Lanao del Sur Provincial Jail in Marawi based on the identification cards seized from the suspect.
Mukaram said Usman was intercepted at a checkpoint on a motorcycle with plate number 1017-8076340.
He said operatives of the Regional Drugs Enforcement Unit (RDEU) 10 had been tailing Usman from Iligan City after receiving reports that he was transporting a big volume of shabu to Marawi.
Jail guard moonlighting as a drug courier.
A police officer included in the drug list of President Duterte was shot dead by motorcycle-riding assailants in Makati yesterday morning.
Maj. Jedfrey Dalson was sitting in his car parked at the corner of J.P. Rizal street and 29th Avenue in Barangay East Rembo when he was killed at around 7 a.m.
Probers have yet to determine the motive for the killing.
Just a wild guess but the motive probably has something to do with the man being on the drug list of President Duterte!
Two members of the Philippine National Police-Highway Patrol Group (PNP-HPG) were arrested for alleged extortion on van and truck drivers in Agusan del Sur.
In a report submitted to PNP chief, Gen. Archie Gamboa on Tuesday, Integrity Monitoring and Enforcement Group (IMEG) chief, Col. Ronald Lee identified the suspects as Staff Sgt. Eddie Manguilimotan, 54, of Mankilam, Tagum City, Davao del Norte; and Cpl. Ralfe Meraflor, 33, of Purok 13, Poblacion in Prosperidad town.
The suspects, who belong to the Agusan del Sur Provincial Highway Patrol Team of the PNP-HPG, were the subject of complaints mostly coming from drivers of delivery trucks and vans who claimed they were forced to shell money by the two each time they pass in their areas.
More cops arrested for extortion.
Charges of drunkenness, resistance of arrest, and disobedience will be filed against a barangay councilor from Bohol who created a scene in a hotel along Escario Street, Cebu City, at Tuesday dawn, March 10, 2010.
Police Major Elisandro Quijano, station chief of Abellana Police station, said that Claver Joseph Duhig, a councilor of Barangay Poblacion 1, Tagbilaran City, Bohol, was arrested at around 1 a.m. after receiving reports from hotel staff that he started to break things in the hotel’s bar.
Quijano said that when the police responded in the said hotel, they found a drunk Duhig, who, when being collared by police, also resisted by punching the arresting policeman, Police Staff Sergeant Jover Batucan.
A drunk and disorderly barangay councilor.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Tuesday stressed that Senate independence must be upheld above political alliances, a day after he led the filing of a petition at the Supreme Court seeking to clarify the role of the upper chamber in the abrogation of treaties.
“Personal interests should never outweigh public welfare. I will always choose to fight for the independence of the Senate," Sotto said in a statement on Tuesday.
On the other hand, Duterte said he could not be compelled to seek the Senate’s concurrencebefore he can terminate the VFA.
“They cannot compel me. I refuse to be compelled. I have terminated it, tapos ang problema ko,” he said.
For the past three years the Senate has allowed Duterte to do what he will and has gone with the flow. Now that the nation's security has been put at risk with the termination of the VFA Senate President Sotto vows an independent Senate. What a joke!
President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday night shrugged off the money laundering allegations being linked with the controversy-hit Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos), stressing that he refused to shut them down because the government needed the money they were generating.
Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) Executive Director Mel Georgie Racela told a recent Senate hearing that at least P14 billion worth of transactions by Pogos were related to suspicious activities.
Duterte also explained that he could not prohibit Chinese from entering the country.
A vast majority of Pogo workers are Chinese nationals.
“We cannot bar Chinese nationals from entering the country because they allow us to enter China also and even work in Hong Kong,” he said.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary Duterte refuses to believe there is corruption in the POGO industry. Where is his "not one whiff of corruption" policy now?
The former budget officer of Maguindanao was found by the Sandiganbayan guilty of graft over fraudulent transactions from 2008 to 2009.
In a decision promulgated Feb. 14, 2020, the court sentenced Datu Ali Abpi, Al-Haj to imprisonment of 8 to 12 years, and ordered him to pay a fine of P14.25 million, which is equivalent to the amount of unlawful purchases made using government funds.
In the information filed by the Office of Ombudsman in 2017, Abpi, Al Haj was accused of conspiring with other provincial officials to make it appear that various medicines were bought from a supplier named Farmacia Minda, found later to be fictitious.
In its decision, the court said payments were made by the provincial government to Farmacia Minda even before disbursement vouchers were issued.
The prosecution was also able to establish that the Special Audit Team of the Commission on Audit was not able to locate Farmacia Minda, and that no business permits were issued to the company.
“These cumulatively serve to support the prosecution’s charge that the accused conspired to make it appear as if medicine was legitimately procured from Farmacia Minda when, in fact, it was a fictitious entity that could not have participated in any bidding, much less deliver the goods required by the provincial government,” the court said in the decision penned by Associate Justice Bayani Jacinto, with the concurrence of Division Chairperson Alex Quiroz and Associate Justice Reynaldo Cruz.
P14 million in fraudulent transactions with a company that did not even exist.
With 136 affirmative votes, 43 negative votes, and one abstention, the House of Representatives approved House Bill No. 78, which seeks to amend the Commonwealth Act No. 146 also known as the Public Service Act.
Under the 1987 Constitution, ownership, operation, control, and management of public utilities should be given to Filipino citizens or to firms that are at least 60 percent owned by Filipinos.
The proposed law now limits the definition of a public utility to electricity distribution, electricity transmission, and water pipeline distribution or sewerage pipeline system.
It also distinguishes “public service,” whose definition under the law is retained, from “public utility.”
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman earlier said the bill was is “fatally violative” of the 1987 Constitution, further arguing that there is no distinction between “public utility” and “public service.”
“It is well-settled that public service is an indispensable attribute or element of a public utility, and the two are synonymous and interchangeable, so much so that there is no sound reason for making a distinction to justify defiance of the Constitution by allowing the non-compliance of ‘public service’ enterprises with the requirement of Filipino citizenship,” Lagman said in a statement.
Why would any nation want to allow its public utilities to be owned by foreigners? How is this bill beneficial to the Philippines?
A lady councilor in Ginatilan town, southwest Cebu was gunned down by still unidentified assailants outside the municipal building on Wednesday.
At past 1 p.m., Ginatilan Councilor Maria Liza Toledo was seen going out of the municipal building after attending the weekly session.
As she walked towards her car, the perpetrators shot the councilor several times.
Another city councilor gunned down. Police say she was likely shot by a sniper as security cameras showed no gunmen on the CCTV footage.
According to Tadique, it is possible that a highly-trained professional killer or a sniper killed the councilor since no one was seen approaching or passing by near her prior to the shooting as shown on the CCTV footage.
Also, no empty shells were found in the area of the incident, said Tadique.
https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/293473/ginatilan-councilor-may-have-been-killed-by-a-sniper-police
It also appears she had links to the drug trade.
Police Brigadier General Albert Ignatius Ferro confirmed that the slain Ginatilan town councilor had links with the illegal drug trade.
At a press conference on Thursday, March 12, 2020, Ferro announced to reporters that Ma. Liza Toledo’s name was found in the drug matrix involving drug lords now jailed in the New Bilibid Prison.
Ferro said Toledo was previously in a relationship with a certain Norbert Antiquando, now locked up in New Bilibid Prison since 2001 for drugs.
“I believe she was listed because of her association with her boyfriend,” he said.
They are also probing into the possibility of politics behind Toledo’s killing.
“We received information that the victim filed a case against one of her relatives who attempted to run for election in the same position as hers,” said Ferro.
“We are also looking into politics considering the presence of political rivalry there,” he added.
Whether the motive was drugs
or politics
it is no surprise that a city councillor has been assassinated
. It's a standard
job hazard in the Philippines.
“To the Filipinos (in America)... if this comes out, vote for Trump. And they say that I am interfering? Of course, I am interfering,” he said.
In endorsing Trump, Duterte said he was intentionally interfering with America’s politics as a way of getting back at US legislators who have been meddling with the Philippines’ internal issues.
“Tell that to the Americans that Duterte is insisting on interfering. You know why? Do you know why I’m interfering? Because they did it first. They (accuse us of) extrajudicial killing 70,000 (people),” he said.
"You started it, wheeeee!" Very, very childish.
The President’s “rambling, divisive” statements when he faced the media on Monday night, supposedly to abate the public’s concern over the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was lamentable, according to political analysts.
Duterte’s reference to the Philippines as a “fucking country” drew strong criticism, including from commentators online, as an “unpresidential” remark that was inappropriate for a nation in crisis.
He used the occasion to turn his ire on rich people, who he said did not need the government’s help despite the coronavirus threat throughout the country.
“They do not need the police, mayors, senators because on their own, they can survive. And to think that the richest people in this country, in this fucking country, were the ones who are milking the most out of our resources,” the President said.
He said the government had the money to “defeat that son of a bitch virus,” but did not say how much.
“This will not last long. I am confident that we will survive this contagion,” he said.
Duterte compared COVID-19 to other pandemics that swept the world, like the bubonic plague and the Spanish flu.
“The so-called Roman empire. You have read the Inquisition? If you have a birthmark, you are a witch and you are burned at (the) stake,” he said.
It seems very rambling and incoherent. Typical Duterte speech.
A former member of the Philippine National Police (PNP) was arrested in a buy-bust operation in the Davao del Sur town of Sta. Cruz Tuesday.
Maj. Crisaldo Gaila, Sta. Cruz OIC-police chief, identified the suspect as Ronald Notarte Baderas, 36, a resident Barangay Barayong, Magsaysay town.
Gaila described Baderas as a street-level pusher, based on the list from the PNP's Directorate for Intelligence.
Police said Baderas was recently released from jail through a plea-bargaining agreement after he was previously caught selling illegal drugs.
Another ex-cop turned drug dealer.
The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG)—for the past one year, two months and counting—has not taken a legal action on an ill-gotten wealth case against the 20 individuals who allegedly held 3,305 shares of stock in Eastern Telecommunications Philippines, Inc. for the benefit of former President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda, a Sandiganbayan court resolution showed.
The Sandiganbayan Fourth Division, in a resolution for Civil Case 0178 dated February 28 this year, said that the OSG led by Solicitor General Jose Calida has yet to inform the court of any legal action it took or if it is still pursuing the ill-gotten wealth case to this day.
Obviously the OSG is preoccupied with more important matters like attempting to shut down ABS-CBN.
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