Retards in the Government 244

It's your weekly compendium of foolishness and corruption in the Philippine government.

https://www.panaynews.net/cop-dismissed-from-service/

A police officer formerly assigned at the Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO) and faced a string of administrative charges was dismissed from the service. 

Police Staff Sergeant Marvin Seasol was ordered axed by the National Police Commission (Napolcom) for grave misconduct. 

Napolcom issued the order on March 16, 2021 yet but was made known only this Friday.

The order was signed by Police Major General Rolando Hinanay, director for Personnel and Records Management, Camp Crame. This was for Seasol’s 2018 case.

According to Napolcom Region 6 director Joseph Celis, however, there is yet another dismissal order against Seasol for another grave misconduct complaint – this was regarding the mauling and shooting of his neighbor in Oton, Iloilo on July 5, 2018. 

Just last year, March 24, 2021, Seasol was tagged in the shooting of a pedicab driver, Normando Estrebor, on Recto Street. Barangay Poblacion West, Oton. 

An incident report from the Oton police station stated that a drunk Seasol allegedly pelted with stones the house of the Estrebor family

A cop has been dismissed for grave misconduct.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1546959/ex-councilor-in-samar-in-stable-condition-after-getting-shot

A former councilor in Jiabong town, Samar province is now in stable condition after he was shot and wounded by still unidentified assailants on Friday afternoon.

Rolando Cabadsan, 56, was working at his car shop located in Barangay Tigbago-an, around 8 kilometers away from the town proper, when the assailants, who were wearing helmet and facemask, approached and shot him on his head and back, said Lt. Elbest Taping, officer-in-charge of the Jiabong municipal police station.

Cabadsan was rushed to a hospital in Tacloban City for treatment while the perpetrators immediately fled onboard a motorcycle.

“There was a lone witness but he could not provide as to the identities of the suspects as both were wearing helmets and facemasks. The area where the incident happened is isolated and there is no mobile phone signal there,” Taping said in a phone interview.

A former councilor was shot by unknown men for unknown reasons.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1548464/ex-soldier-nabbed-in-drug-buy-bust-operation-in-camarines-sur

A former member of the Philippine Army and now a barangay tanod (village watchman) was arrested in a buy-bust operation in Del Gallego town in Camarines Sur on Tuesday morning.

The suspect, Homer Suarilla, 42, was arrested in Barangay Poblacion at around 11:20 a.m., according to a report by Cotton Yuson, information officer of Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Bicol.

Suarilla was included in the illegal drugs watch list of the PDEA.

Authorities confiscated from the suspect 50 grams of crystal meth, more commonly known locally as shabu, worth P340,000.

Yuson said that the suspect reportedly got his supply from a source in Quezon province.

He was declared “absent without official leave” from the military in 2007.

A soldier who went AWOL in 2007 has been busted for drugs.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1166826

Police investigators are looking into family feud or "rido" as a possible motive for the ambush that killed two, including the chief of the Lanao del Norte - Highway Patrol Group (HPG), and wounded another companion in Sultan Dumalondong, Lanao del Sur.

A report from Lanao del Sur police stated that Major Omar Tago, the Lanao del Norte - HPG chief, was on his way to Barangay Pagalungan on Monday to attend the vigil of a family member who died four days before the incident when the suspects fired upon the vehicle of the police official.

In an update Tuesday, Lt. Col. Cristio Lagyop Jr., chief of the Regional Public Information Office of the Police Regional Office in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, confirmed that four assailants on motorcycles carried out the attack.

Tago was rushed to a nearby hospital but was declared dead while being revived.

Tago, who heads the HPG Lanao del Norte, was on his 20th year in the service this year.

A cop who was head of the HPG Lanao del Norte was assassinated in a possible rido or family feud.

https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/423016/senate-panel-finds-duterte-accountable-for-complicity-in-plunder

The Senate blue ribbon committee on Tuesday accused President Rodrigo Duterte of complicity in “one of the biggest plunders of the Philippines’ coffers in recent history” that involved his friends and appointees in the government’s multibillion-peso pandemic supply deals with Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. in 2020 and 2021.

The panel chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon said Duterte “must be held accountable” for betrayal of public trust, a ground for impeachment that was not specifically recommended in his committee’s report.

Gordon’s committee released its partial report recommending criminal charges, such as graft and plunder, against several people, including Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, the president’s close Chinese friend and former Presidential Economic Adviser Michael Yang, former Budget Undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao, and several Pharmally executives.

“The nation has been betrayed. While millions are unemployed, have become poorer and hungrier, are desperate even for just a glimmer of hope, what this administration has done is to exacerbate the already execrable and hopeless state the people are all in. None can be more unforgivable,” the report said.

The committee said the acts of “malfeasance, misfeasance, and/or non-feasance” by government officials in cahoots with Pharmally officers were consummated “under the nose of the President.”

“The amounts involved in the dirty transactions were enormous, producing a stench that would have been impossible to ignore in Malacañang,” it said.

“The President as Chief Executive should have known what his appointees and friends were doing,” the Gordon panel said.

“If he did not know prior to the Senate investigation, then it certainly came to his attention when the hearings were underway, and instead of investigating the matter or supporting any such investigation, he chose to defend and protect those closest to him who had dipped their fingers into the coffers of the nation,” it added.

It endorsed plunder cases against Duque, Lao, and Overall Deputy Ombudsman Warren Rex Liong, who used to be a director at the PS-DBM.

Plunder charges were also recommended against Pharmally executives led by its Singaporean president and chair Huang Tzu Yen and Filipino executives Linconn Ong, Mohit Dargani, Twinkle Dargani, and Krizle Grace Mago; Yang, who is based in Davao City and was said to be Pharmally’s guarantor and financier; and his close associate Lin Weixiong.

The panel recommended graft and corruption charges against all of them.

“The most troubling question remains—why was the President so quick to defend those closest to him once their names were linked to the anomaly and then so eager to discredit the Senate investigation, prevent his appointees from cooperating, and absolve them of any liability?” the report said.

“Unfortunately, based on the President’s own behavior, one cannot help but conclude that he was aware of, allowed, and condoned the misdeeds of his closest associates and appointees,” it said. “For this, he must be held accountable.”

The Senate has recommends charges against several officials over the Pharmally scandal. The same report also says Duterte is not without blame in this matter and must be held accountable.