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Na- 1-2-3

Published by Ellen on June 8, 2025

Na 1-2-3 is a Filipino slang expression for “You have been had”. Naloko ka.

That’s what many feel Senate President Chiz Escudero is trying to pull something on the Filipino people with his dilly-dallying tactics on the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.

Activist priest, Fr. Flavie Villanueva, SVD, who runs Program Paghilum (Healing), which helps widows and orphans of extra-judicial killings during former president Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs get justice and rebuild their lives, sent me a message last Wednesday that he too deposited P123 to the controversial BPI joint account of Rodrigo and Sara Duterte after reading my column that I deposited P100 to confirm that it is still active.

Why P123?

Chiz’ ‘kill impeachment’ maneuvers becoming obvious

Published by Ellen on June 4, 2025

I wanted to know if the controversial BPI joint bank account of Rodrigo Roa Duterte and Sara Z. Duterte is still active because that account will play a crucial role in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.

Last Monday, June 2, I went to a BPI branch and deposited P100 (not P500 as what my friend did on April 28, 2016 to disprove Duterte’s claim that the account was non-existent). It was accepted. See above deposit slip. Proof that the account is still active.

On several occasions, former senator Antonio Trillanes IV gave the public a preview of the mind-boggling content of that BPI account, such as the deposits of Sammy Uy’s managers checks—ranging from P7 million to P10 million each — totaling almost P134 million in the name of Duterte and members of his family – Sara, Paolo, Sebastian and Cielito S. Avanceña, his long-time partner.

Sammy Uy was identified as a drug lord by self-confessed member of the Davao Death Squad, Arturo Lascañas.

Sara Duterte impeachment trial: first round in the 2028 presidential contest

Published by Ellen on May 18, 2025

Elected senators in the May 12 elections proclaimed on May 17. Photo by Bullit Marquez.

The campaign for the 2028 presidential elections has begun.
The arena for the first round of the battle is the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte which is scheduled to start on July 30.
Public attention is now on the 24 senators of the 20th Congress who will sit as judges in the impeachment trial including the 12 who won in the May 12 midterm elections.

China’s support for Dutertes solid as ever

Published by Ellen on March 27, 2025

An online poster “Global Tribute to Tatay Digong” with an accompanying text in Chinese has been circulating on social media platforms being followed by supporters of the Dutertes.

It’s a call for an activity on March 28 for the 80th birthday of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who is currently detained in Scheveningen, The Hague while awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity of murder in connection to the extrajudicial killings in the course of his war against illegal drugs during his presidency.

Here’s a Google translation of the accompanying text in Chinese:

No letup in truth-telling for VERA Files

Published by Ellen on January 13, 2025

After the initial jolt over the announcement of Meta that it is ending its third-party fact-checking program starting in the United States, we reminded ourselves that VERA Files was VERA Files before we became a third-party fact-checker for Facebook, as Meta was known in 2018.

We were then a 10-year-old organization producing in-depth reports that helped the public understand better issues affecting their daily lives so that their decisions would be based on facts.

Immediately following last Tuesday’s announcement, Meta told us that our 2025 fact-checking agreement remains unchanged.

As we said in a statement we released last Wednesday, we will continue doing our work of informing the public with the truth.

Marcos unsure he has numbers in Senate for Duterte impeachment

Published by Ellen on December 2, 2024

What’s the game our top political leaders are playing on us?

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. confirmed on Friday that he had sent a “private communication” to members of the House of Representatives to “not file impeachment complaints” against Vice President Sara Duterte.

Earlier in the day, the vice president didn’t show up at the National Bureau of Investigation which subpoenaed her for her public disclosure that she has hired a killer to assassinate the president, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez if she were killed.

Impeachment trial to open Duterte’s joint bank accounts with VP Sara for scrutiny

Published by Ellen on November 21, 2024

Former president Rodrigo Duterte grabs microphone and aims to hit former senator Antonio Trillanes IV with it during the Nov. 13 quadcom hearing,

The apoplectic reaction of Rodrigo Duterte during the Nov. 13 hearing of the House quad committee when former senator Antonio Trillanes IV presented some contents of the former president’s bank accounts in the Bank of the Philippine Islands is not surprising at all.

Since the news on those bank accounts of Duterte and his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, were first published on April 28, 2016, the former president’s reaction has ranged from lying to more lying to more lying.

In the course of his endless lying, sometimes his mind trips and he blurts out the truth, such as when he said during the quadcom hearing that it is not impossible for his bank accounts to now hold even P5 billion.

Davao City’s ‘ghost employees’ early funders of Duterte’s EJKs

Published by Ellen on October 23, 2024

The House Quad Committee (Quadcom), which has uncovered gruesome information, in its investigation of extrajudicial killings (EJKs), is now into tracing the money trail that financed former president Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs.

Quadcom co-chairs Reps. Bienvenido “Benny” Abante Jr. and Dan Fernandez said that the mega-panel composed of the Committees on Dangerous Drugs, Public Order and Safety, Human Rights, and Public Accounts, will seek the assistance of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) in tracing the illicit transactions.

Former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office General Manager Royina Garma, who also played a major role in Duterte’s bloody program, had given information on the rewards system which was patterned to Davao drug war template that she helped implement when she was a Station Commander in one of the police stations in Davao.

Families appeal to authorities: Return James and Felix to us

Published by Ellen on September 26, 2024

It has been over a month since James Jazmines disappeared. It will be a month on Saturday in the case of Felix Salaveria, Jr.

No one disappears in the normal scheme of things in this world. Life’s cycle consists of birth, childhood, adulthood, old age, death. Some get to complete all the stages, some are not so lucky and skip some stages. But nowhere is there a stage when one simply disappears. Unless something drastic happened to disrupt that cycle as in the case of Jazmines and Salaveria.

The families of the two point to government agents as behind the dastardly act. Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said “The tell-tale signs of state involvement in the abductions of Jazmines and Salaveria are there.”

Can 3 high-ranking PNP officials get out of ICC ‘suspects’ list?

Published by Ellen on July 27, 2024

What will the Philippine National Police (PNP) do with the three high-ranking officers who were named as suspects in the ongoing probe by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs?

The three are: Major General Romeo Caramat Jr., former chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) and currently the acting area commander of Luzon; retired colonel Edilberto Leonardo, identified in the document as former commissioner of the National Police Commission (the Napolcom’s website still lists him as a commissioner); Brig. Gen. Eleazar Matta, identified by the ICC as former PNP chief intelligence officer (He is currently the director of the PNP-Drug Enforcement Group.).

The three police officers were named, together with Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa and former PNP chief Oscar Albayalde, in a four-page confidential document dated July 3, sent through the Philippine Embassy in The Hague and released to the media on July 25 by former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, one of the earliest complainants to the ICC against Duterte’s brutal drug war.

Author: Ellen