The Department of Justice panel has junked drug trafficking charges against suspected drug lords Peter Lim, Kerwin Espinosa and several others.
I’m dumbfounded.
I share Sen. Grace Poe’s feeling of distress. In a statement, Poe said: “I am disturbed by the basis upon which the DOJ panel made its recommendation to dismiss the drug charges against Mr. Espinosa and others. For one, Kerwin Espinosa, himself admitted before a Senate inquiry that he was indeed involved in the drug trade.
At the start of his administration, President Duterte said there were three million drug addicts in the Philippines which was the reason why he launched a brutal campaign against illegal drugs which has now claimed over 4,000 as of March 2017 per data from the Philippine National Police.
From three million drug addicts, which number he attributed to former head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Dionisio Santiago, he increased it to four million in less than a year.
He even fired then Dangerous Drugs Board chairman Benjamin Reyes for saying there were only 1.8 million drug addicts in the country. Reyes was replaced by Santiago whom Duterte fired after just a few months at the DDB for saying the 10,000-bed capacity mega drug rehabilitation facility in Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija built by a Chinese official was a “mistake” and an “impractical solution” to the drug menace.
March 8 is International Women’s Day to highlight the achievement of women in all fields – social, economic, cultural and political.
In the Philippines, where women have long proven their worth, they are still subjected to a lot of disrespect. And this is from no less than the President himself.
Last Feb. 22, in his speech at the 6th Regional Community Defense Group Ground, Camp General Adriano Hernandez, Dingle, Iloilo last Feb. 22, Duterte talked about the difficulty of maintaining two families with the salary he is getting as President.
Duterte was leading the surveys in the contest that he eventually won convincingly.
With the powers of the presidency, Duterte has been effective in crushing most of political his enemies. His devoted mob has been successful in spreading chaos in cyberspace.
But as one sage said, “Truth is always like oil in water; no matter how much of water you add, it always floats on top.”
Take note that in the statements of Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, they were not denying the contents of their bank accounts cited by VERA Files in its special report about the President and his daughter’s undeclared wealth.
They dismissed the story as “hearsay” because they said the bank records, where we based the report, have not been authenticated by the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
Last Sunday, VERA Files, which I am part of, released its analysis of the bank documents which Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV exposed in April 2016 comparing them with the Duterte father and daughter statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.
This is what VERA Files found out:
By VERA Files
President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter Sara omitted to fully disclose their joint deposits and investments at the Bank of Philippine Islands, which conservatively exceeded P100 million in some years, when they were mayor and vice mayor of Davao City, our analysis of bank records submitted to Congress and their annual net worth declarations shows.
According to the bank records, Duterte and Sara’s transactions with BPI, initially its Greenhills-EDSA branch and later the Julia Vargas branch, included:
• A P48.17 million placement in 2006 that grew to P55.13 million by 2013
• A P40.55 million investment in 2009 that stood at P41.72 million in 2013
• About $220,000, roughly P10 million, from 2006 to 2012
• The purchase of P80 million in insurance policies in 2014
• A P16.85 million investment begun in 2014
The bank records came from the Senate. Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV entered the documents that he said were from the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) into the Senate records on Oct. 3 after delivering a privilege speech saying the president had more than P2.2 billion in questionable bank transactions.
President Duterte never ceases to stun us.
Yesterday, he admitted that his story about the offshore accounts of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV was a product of his imagination.
“Wala ito. Produkto ng isip ko ito. Tinanggalan ko talaga. Ginamit mo. Nag-issue ka ng waiver… Iba ang account number, iba ang totoo. Sinadya ko iyan,” he said after Trillanes went to Singapore and proved that the two bank accounts supposedly based in Singapore in the list Duterte read to the public were non-existent.
His admission made him a manufacturer of fake news.
If that was not jarring enough, he bragged that he has fooled Trillanes.”Kita mo siya ngayon. He’s desperate. Pumunta ng Singapore, mag-gastos lang para propaganda lang,” he further said.
We thought only a fool would do that.
From the fragmented information about the resumption of talks on joint exploration with China in the disputed parts of the Spratlys, what is emerging is a repeat of jumbo loans that the administration of Gloria Arroyo obtained from the Chinese government in 2004 in exchange for agreeing to allow China to explore within the country’s economic exclusive zone.
In his State-of-the Nation address last Monday, the issue about West Philippine Sea was mentioned sort of in passing. “The West Philippine Sea issue and federalism are matters that we have to tackle sooner or later,” Duterte said.
Reporters followed it up in his post-SONA press conference. Duterte added more information:
“When they start to excavate the gas and all. I tell you, it’s going to be just like a joint venture. Para pareho. (So it’s equal). “
Oftentimes, when we read or watch on TV news about what’s happening in Donald Trump’s United States of America, you can easily find similarities in the Philippines.
It’s because Trump and the Philippine’s Rodrigo Duterte have many things in common: their contempt for the rule of law, their low regard of women, and their antagonism towards media.
The other day, Trump’s press, Secretary Sean Spicer resigned. This inspired social media wit, Bernard Ong, to pen a letter to Trump with very exciting recommendations.
The president of the Philippines is the country’s chief executive, head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
His powers are awesome, so his words carry the weight of his powerful position.
In his one year in office, President Duterte has shocked, stunned, and bewildered not only Filipinos but also the international community with his pronouncements.
A political observer said that to keep his sanity, he usually waits a day or two before deciding whether to take seriously or dismissing Duterte’s statements.