-- Ernesto Maceda: Will GMA stay for 20 more years?
On June 30, 2004, GMA promised a prosperous country with a balanced budget by 2010. She announced a 10-point agenda of development that would substantially solve the problem of poverty and unemployment, with a target to create six million new jobs.
At the meeting of different business organizations at Hotel Intercon, Makati City, the other day, GMA has now revised her timetable for development in 20 years.
Is she now planning to stay 20 years under her version of a parliamentary system? After the 2004 elections, First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo told golfing partners in Wack-Wack that people were wrong to think GMA will stay for only six years.
GMA's 20-year timetable will produce one result: Those who are still deciding whether to migrate to other countries will now decide to go. The country's brain drain problem will graduate to crisis proportions — education-wise, health-wise and technology-wise.
Heh.
-- Since I read mostly pro-war, center-right/moderate blogs, I kinda predicted Wretchard and Michelle Malkin would be part of Pajamas Media, but I never saw this one coming. Guess who's PJMedia's contributor in Manila.
Is it this guy? Is it this one? Or this one?
To find out the answer, go to this site.
Tis a good choice, btw.
-- Neal Cruz: One boo-boo after another
-- See, I told you nagkukunwari lang ang pekeng pangulo para hindi magalit ang tao sa kanya dahil sa EVAT.
-- "Chicken little" = "maliit na manok"?
Lost in translation?
-- Conrad de Quiros: Cry Rape
More here from Ninez Cacho Olivarez.
Ernie Maceda:
One very clear picture that has been projected in this case — the lack of outrage demonstrated by GMA or any concerned members of her Cabinet, not even from the usually tough-talking Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez. Contrast that with the sense of urgency GMA and her Cabinet demonstrated in the case of Angelo de la Cruz, the Filipino hostage in Iraq, even sending a high-level team to Iraq. Is a kidnap victim abroad more entitled to government protection and attention than a rape victim of US soldiers right in our own backyard?
GMA makes it a practice to visit the wakes of Filipinos killed in violent incidents or calamities or the injured in hospitals. Does a 22-year-old female college graduate have to be raped and killed before GMA takes an interest in the case and maybe visit the victim? To most women, rape is a fate worse than death. Obviously, not to GMA. She would rather spend time to be with Donald Dee on his birthday.
Ducky Paredes: Not the VFA, but the GMA
The fault is not really with the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). While the VFA has many provisions that no self-respecting nationalist will accept, the VFA at least gives a measure of protection to victims of private crimes committed by any visiting forces covered by the VFA. The VFA binds the US Embassy to produce the VFA plaintiff in court proceedings – at least, for a full year. Thus, if one can get him convicted in 12 months, justice would have been served.
What is really wrong has been the way that the rape within the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) of a 22-year old woman from Zamboanga has been handled.
Read the whole thing.
I'll tell why GMA is afraid to offend the US: It's because she needs their political support to prop up her illegitimate rule. Sure playing the China card is fun every once in a while, pero alam nating lahat na walang kwenta ang suporta ng China sa political problems ng ating pekeng pangulo.
-- Secretary of Injustice Raul Gonzales threatens People's court with "inciting to sedition"
Still determined to keep the truth of the presidential poll rigging hidden, Malacañang, through its Justice chief, threatened to charge organizers of Citizens' Congress for Truth and Accountability, along with a former Vice President, with sedition for “publicly trying” President Arroyo on alleged violations of the Constitution as the CCTA opened yesterday.
But allies of the President were not content with just airing threats. Some provocateurs were reportedly sent by some Malacañang officials to scuttle the people's tribunal hearing.
The first witness also failed to show up claiming he had received threats if he as much as showed himself yesterday to testify in that forum.
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said the government will not tolerate such seditious actions, stressing that “we have to point out what is happening there (people's court hearing), all that is being said...so many provisions in the Revised Penal Code can be thrown at (Guingona),” adding while he does not want to enumerate these violations, the Arroyo administration will decide later which charges to file against the CCTA group leaders.
He broadly hinted that the Arroyo government will be initiating contempt raps against the people's tribunal, later saying that the government has a policy of declogging the jails of overstaying criminals and that “some people are to old to send to jail.” in apparent reference to the septuagenarian Guingona.
More: Arroyo troublemakers tried to disrupt first day of hearings and got the snot beaten out of them.
Comment: obviously, Arroyo is so worried re the damage she will receive from all the corruption and anomalies that will be exposed during the hearings, that she had to resort to using troublemakers to disrupt the proceedings -- even if they keep saying na "kangaroo court" lang raw sila.
PCIJ lists down the basis of the inquiry:
Electoral fraud — undermining the independence of the Commission on Elections and directing or conniving with the Commission, the military and the police to commit electoral fraud for ensuring victory in the 2004 elections and using government funds for electioneering purposes (eg. use of the agriculture fund, transfer of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration trust fund to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., and use of the Road users tax).
Political killings and other human-rights violations — allowing the commission of summary executions or extrajudicial killings, abduction and enforced disappearances, torture, illegal arrests and arbitrary detention and other violations in pursuit of the government’s counter-insurgency campaign and the US global war on terror;
Graft and corruption — approving contracts grossly disadvantageous to the government, directly or indirectly accepting payola from jueteng lords and using the money to bankroll the presidential campaign; and
Other anomalous and unlawful acts which includes the recent controversies on the Venable contract, Executive Order 464, Northrail project, and the calibrated preemptive response (CPR) policy.
PCIJ: ANAD analyzed
BEARING anti-communist placards, engaging the audience in a shouting match, and later in fisticuffs, members of the Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy (ANAD) disrupted the opening of the Citizens’ Congress for Truth and Accountability’s (CCTA) first of a series of hearings yesterday at the U.P. Theater.
Today, some 50 ANAD members again made their presence felt by demonstrating — this time sans any skirmish — in front of the U.P. College of Social Work and Community Development building where the second hearing day of the Citizens’ Congress was held.
If ANAD, an anti-communist group, somehow rings a bell, it’s because we had a post months ago at the height of the "Gloriagate" scandal about certain party-list organizations that were mentioned in the taped conversations allegedly between Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and former elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.
-- La lang. Natatawa ako sa pangalan na "Kumander Putol."
Ellen Tordesillas:
But the biggest error was they caught the wrong guy. Sahiron is known as the “one-armed bandit” because he lost his right arm. The man Mendoza captured has a right arm. What was missing was his left arm.
Also, Sahiron is about 60 years old. Mendoza’s guy was 20 years younger.
It turned out that the one Mendoza got was Antonio Gara, whose notoriety in Zamboanga is in cockfighting. Poor guy. He should thank Arlyn de la Cruz of Net 25 who was asked by the PNP to identify Sahiron because she knows very well the ASG leaders.
Can you imagine kung ano ang malamang na nangyari kay Mr. Gara kung wala si Arlyn ng NET25? Shudderrrr...
More here:
Wrongful arrest. The wrongful arrest of Antonio Gara, said to be a lookalike of Abu Sayyaf leader Radulan Sahiron, raises several serious questions. Does this President not have a reliable checking mechanism before she goes on TV to announce such important matter? This has happened several times before. Remember the GMA announcement of the death of Abu Sayyaf Commander Khadaffy Janjalani? And the announcement of the arrest of escaped terrorist Faisal Morohambsar? Both were false.
The other disturbing issue is the manhandling of the suspect who was beaten up by arresting Philippine National Police (PNP) officers and his family threatened with guns, a usual practice of lawmen in violation of existing standard operating procedures.
And why do PNP-Criminal Investigation Detection Group police officers from Manila just barge into a citizen's home to arrest him without serving an arrest warrant and forcibly drag him to their jeep with Armalites pointed at him, his wife and three daughters and without coordinating with the local PNP station or barangay chairman who could have immediately established the true identity of the suspect?
Again, the question is asked — will somebody be held responsible and punished for this boo-boo? The Armed Forces of the Philippines, Senate President Franklin Drilon and Sen. Nene Pimentel are correct in blaming PNP chief Director General Arturo Lomibao. But Lomibao is untouchable. Remember, his name is mentioned in the Garci tapes?
You have a point, manong!
-- JB Baylon fears na unti unting nasisira ang demokrasya natin.
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