MANILA, Philippines — President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo could no longer undo the alleged corruption that attended her nine-year administration but her best exit strategy would be honest and peaceful and orderly elections in May, former President Joseph Estrada said on occasion of the Lenten break and her approaching 63rd birthday.
“Perhaps, all I can say is that, overall, she no longer has a chance to overturn the corruption committed under her administration,” Estrada told reporters covering his campaign to return to Malacañang.
“The last she can do to leave a legacy is to see to it that there’d be an honest, clean and orderly election. That’s all she can do so she can be remembered by our countrymen,” he added.
In an interview, [Comelec Commissioner Gregorio] Larrazabal said the ballots for Leyte were shipped out first since these were the ones most recently completed. He said Comelec decided to transfer some of the ballots since the National Printing Office basement is almost filled by the 27 million special ballots that were already printed.
“We cannot put all the ballots in NPO but majority will be stored at the PhilPost warehouse…If the political parties were at the NPO and see how the ballots are stacked, they would realize that we really need to transfer some of the ballots,” he said in a radio dzMM interview.
Larrazabal said NPO printers are churning out 700,000 to 900,000 ballots every day. He added that the Comelec is on track to beat the April 30 deadline to print all 50 million ballots needed for the May 10 automated elections.
For governor, incumbent Gov. Victor Tanco, Sr. LP led the survey with 80.0% in Roxas City, 45.8% in 1st district and 57.5% in 2nd district, Former Agriculture Usec. Jocelyn “Jocjoc” Bolante UKC, 4.2%, 28.3% and 19.2% and Amoroso, ind 0.8%, 0.8% and 0.8% with undecided 15.0%, 25% and 22.5%.For vice governor, Board Member Nonoy Contreras LP, 62.5% in Roxas City, 48.3% in 1st district and 55.8% in 2nd district and Former City Councilor Mark Ortiz UKC, 19.2%, 26.7% and 13.3% with undecided of 18.3%, 25.0% and 30.8%.
Bolante, alleged architect of the fertilizer fund scam, is the official gubernatorial bet for Capiz of Sen. Manny Villar’s Nacionalista Party. NP is allied with Bolante’s Ugyon Kita Capiz party.
MANILA, Philippines—The resignation of the top officials of Lakas-Kampi-Christian Muslim Democrats could lead to more defections to the Nacionalista Party (NP) of Senator Manuel Villar, an official from the rival Liberal Party (LP) said.
“Gibo’s (Teodoro) resignation as chairman may lead to more defections from Lakas-Kampi. It shows that there are problems with the party because personalities formerly identified with Lakas-Kampi are aligning themselves with NP,” Quezon Representative and LP spokesman Lorenzo “Erin” Tañada III said.
Tañada, a reelectionist congressman, said the development in the ruling administration party “bolsters our claim that Senator Villar is the secret candidate of the administration.”
Palace exec: Gibo’s resignation puts admin party in ‘win-win’ situation
(Updated 11:05 a.m.) A Palace official said on Wednesday that the resignation of administration standard bearer Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro as chairman has put the ruling Lakas-Kampi-CMD party in a win-win situation.
“If any, it’s a win-win situation for the party, since the new chairman, whoever the party chooses, can concentrate on his role and Secretary Teodoro can likewise focus on his campaign,” deputy presidential spokesman Gary Olivar said in an interview with GMANews.TV.
On the other hand, he said “the President has no comment on the issue, leaving it in the hands of party organizers.”
PUT it this way, now Rep. Nikki Teodoro, Gibo’s wife, will probably get her wish of putting up their own political party for her husband. Tsk, tsk. This is what happens when you disregard Uncle Danding’s wise counsel.
MANILA, Philippines—To prove that he was once poor, Senator Manuel “Manny” Villar is willing to bring Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to Tondo on condition that the latter would also give him a tour of Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, where seven protesting farmers were killed in 2004.
Villar posed this challenge to his rival amid questions raised on his political advertisements, portraying him and his family to be victims of poverty.
“Pabayaan mo, iimbitahin ko ngayon gabi si Noynoy. Anytime, sasamahan ko siya sa bahay namin sa Moriones. Ituturo ko sa kanya yung kung saan ako lumaki. Ikukuwento ko sa kanya kung saan ako naglalaro, ang playground namin; kung saan iyong puwesto namin sa palengke, kung saan kami nagtitinda, kung saan ako nag-aral. Ituturo ko sa kanya lahat yan para malaman niya ang buhay mahirap (Don’t you worry, I will invite Noynoy tonight. Anytime I will go with him in our house in Moriones. I will show him where I grew up. I will show him where I played, where my playground was, our stall in the market and where I studied. I will show all these to him so he would know how it is to be poor),” he said in a radio interview Tuesday night.
Unlike Aquino, Villar said he has no relatives working for the Arroyo government.
“Ako walang kamag-anak na kasama ng Pangulo. Si Noynoy yata anim o lima? Eh bakit ako ang dapat magpaliwanag, eh sila ang nag-imbento ng Villaroyo, sila rin ay kailangan magpaliwanag (I don’t have relatives who are with the President. I think Noynoy have five or six? Then, why should I explain when they are the ones who invented ‘Villaroyo.’ They should also explain,’ he said in a radio interview Tuesday night.
Villar also noted that Arroyo’s former Cabinet members are, in fact, now allied with Aquino and helping his campaign.
HERE are the documents used by several columnists to disprove Sen. Manny Villar’s so-called slum origins.
The first page is the death certificate of Danny B. Villar, the senator’s brother, who passed away at the FEU Hospital, and whose body was then transferred to the Funeraria Paz, w/c was then and now, a funeral parlor only afforded by the middle to upper classes.
The succeeding pages show the land title for the Villar family’s property in Navotas, and memorandum of encumbrances on said San Rafael property:
The photo below is of the Villar house w/c the family occupied since 1962. It is located on 375 Bernardo St., San Rafael Village, an exclusive village in Navotas. The 560-square-meter-property is now owned by Jumbo Fishing whose owner, Jun Borres, bought in 1987.
“This is not a war of I am right and you are wrong. This is a business of believing in fighting for the leader you think will best help the country,” said Lynn Gamboa, president of the Negros Cultural Foundation and owner of the green bungalow.
Her neighbor, Gina Bautista Martin, who comes from a landed family in Negros, did not paint her house yellow on a whim. She is going all-out for Aquino.Gamboa, who raises funds for museums in Negros, is just as dedicated to Teodoro’s campaign. She even had a huge face of Gibo drawn on her fence and painted her gate green.
Leftist groups Gabriela and Bayan Muna lead the race for party-list seats in Congress, with each getting 6 percent of the vote in the latest Manila Standard Poll.The nationwide survey, which asked 2,500 registered voters to cast ballots for their presidential, vice presidential and senatorial choices, was conducted from March 21 to 23, and had a margin of error of two percentage points.For the first time since it was conducted in December, the poll also asked respondents to cast votes for their party-list choices, said Pedro Laylo Jr., resident pollster at Manila Standard.
MANILA, Philippines – Saranggani Gov. Rene Miguel Dominguez on Wednesday tendered his resignation as party president of the ruling Lakas-Kampi Christian Muslim Democrats.
In his resignation letter, Dominguez said he resigned as party president to allow the next Lakas-Kampi chairman a free hand in choosing his replacement. He is the second top Lakas official to leave his post after the party’s chairman, Gilbert Teodoro, announced his resignation Tuesday.
“To the national executive committee of Lakas Kampi Command, I hereby tender my resignation as party president effective immediately. With the recent resignation of our chairman Gilbert C. Teodoro Jr. I would like to give the incoming chairman a free hand to select his new president. I would like to thank the national executive committee and Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for the trust and confidence given to me,” he said in his resignation letter.
In his resignation letter, Teodoro said he resigned so he can focus on his presidential campaign. He noted the party needs a chairman who can respond on a 24/7 basis to the needs of its candidates.
In an interview with Ces Drilon on ANC’s Rundown on Tuesday, Teodoro said his decision to leave the party should not be seen as a step toward withdrawing from the presidential race.
“Definitely, I'm pursuing my candidacy,” he said.
Francis Manglapus, secretary-general of Lakas-Kampi-CMD, said Teodoro had previously discussed the issue of leaving the party’s top post.
Manglapus said it would be better for the party to have a full-time chairman since Teodoro is too busy hopping from one place to another.
He said it would be up to the Lakas-Kampi-CMD national executive committee to choose the next party chief.
WHOEVER wins there, it will still be a Marcos. After all that’s been said and done, they will be a family again. Who knows all this is just a moro-moro cleverly hatched by the family to make sure they have all their bases covered, whoever wins the presidential elections. Creepy. Parang Addams family.
Btw, congratulations to Bongbong Marcos, senatorial bet of the Nacionalista Party, who we hear has just upgraded from a Toyota Cefiro to a new Prius. Known as an environmental-friendly vehicle, the Prius is the favorite of Hollywood celebrities like Leonardo di Caprio.
We’re pretty sure Toyota Motor Phils. vice chair Alfred Ty will be happy to hear of Mr. Marcos’s new purchase, as the company had admitted to some difficulty in trying to reach its 100-cars target in 2009. At a cost of P2.25 million, it costs about as much as a Camry, Toyota’s mid-sized sedan. Hopefully, Mr. Marcos tells his driver to park the Prius in actual parking areas, instead of occupying no-parking spaces like they would do w/ the Cefiro. Don’t you just hate VIPs having their cars and drivers hanging about, waiting for them with the motors and airconditioning running, and in no-parking areas no less? That’s so uncool.
Power—both for those who wield it and who are subordinate to its holders—has its own inexorable logic. Thus we can assume that a designation lasting only until June 30, for many of the officials reshuffled or promoted by the President, is its own reward.
If that were the case the public might consider the latest presidential reshuffle in bad taste, and of doubtful legality, but nothing more than yet another appalling example of how the administration is detached from any ethical moorings. But there are more far-reaching implications: name the institution, and hardly any has been left untouched. Our career diplomats are up in arms over the shabby treatment of Ambassador Delia Albert; the military is irritated with junior generals leapfrogging senior ones; the legal community is also upset over the maneuvering over the next chief justice; the civil service has more reason to be dismayed; and even our cultural agencies have been purged with all the zeal of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution in China
The party-list system, according to a member of the commission that crafted the Constitution, was envisioned to be an experiment in congressional representation. At the hands of people with unbridled greed for political clout and all the perks of public office, the experiment is doomed to failure. Today the party list has become nothing more than a backdoor entrance to the House of Representatives.
Major political parties use it to install more partisans in the House, with the same right to vote and the same pork barrel allocations as regular congressmen. Major religious groups use it to advance their interests and expand their influence in the political realm. And President Arroyo, in the twilight of her nine years in power, appears bent on installing every able-bodied relative and loyalist official in the House, even through the backdoor, and even if none of the officials can be considered marginalized by any stretch of the imagination, to ensure her continuing influence over national affairs.
THE government last year tried selling three big-ticket privatization items, without success because of poor market interest. The Department of Finance is again hawking the three items at bargain basement pieces and through negotiated arrangements, and seeking to strike a deal within the second quarter. The justification, as usual, is the need to cap the deficit for 2010 at the programmed P293 billion.
But what’s so pressing a need is there to meet the June 30 deadline? Because Gloria Arroyo is exiting on that day?
MANUEL VILLAR HAD A MOST INTERESTING answer to the pile of evidence that they were never poor and that his kid brother did not die because they were poor.
His brother, he said, was in fact rushed to FEU because it was an emergency, and nobody thinks about expense during an emergency. But he was taken in as a charity patient. He died in any case because they could not afford the cost of his treatment. Their house in Tondo was so small all nine of them slept side by side on a single mat under a single mosquito net. That was what made his father take out a loan from the GSIS to buy the property in San Rafael payable in 20-25 years.
Even if these were true, and they can be easily disproven (except for the part where they all slept on a single mat, which only they can say), none of it makes things better, it makes them worse. They speak of values, or scale of priorities, or sense of proportion that do not commend him for president.
NATURALLY the refutations cannot but please the LP hierarchy, but by ascribing the counter-stories to a “smear campaign” organized by the party, is Villar insinuating that Monsod and other media commentators have allowed themselves to be used by the LP?
There is, after all, a candidate’s primary duty to tell the truth—and nothing but—to voters. And if a media person discovers documents that contradict the candidate’s version of truth, is it not the duty of the media to lay bare the facts for public consumption?
There’s a lesson here for all would-be candidates, and that is to make sure that any claim or statement made in the course of a campaign is supported by fact. In their efforts to create the persona of a poor boy who made good, Villar’s image handlers may have gone too far with overly dramatic claims and embellishing on the already-touching story of Villar’s late brother.
The way Ate Glue treats her appointees can only be described as “bastos”. This is most surprising because as she is a past president’s daughter we assume she has breeding. You would think her mother taught her some manners. It is apparent the nuns at Assumption failed to do that too. Look at how she treats high officials in government as if they are nothing more than household help, who incidentally, also deserve better. Ate Glue is too cacique for comfort! But even caciques have old world manners.
Ate Glue’s lack of courtesy betrays a mind set that explains why she is hated. Even some people who have worked with her call her evil behind her back. Simple courtesies separate us from creatures that live by the laws of the jungle… and yes, the snake pit of Malacañang. The most surprising thing is why she wonders why people don’t like her.
I still remember how badly she treated Dante Canlas, the UP economics professor without whose help Ate Glue wouldn’t have been able to submit an acceptable dissertation for her PhD after a UP School of Economics panel was reported to have rejected her first effort. Dr Canlas was the last to know that he had been relieved, first of his post as head of NEDA then subsequently as our country’s representative to the ADB Board. The worse part of it is, his replacement at ADB didn’t have the qualifications that could match Dr Canlas. She was just a regular “brown noser” to her not so royal highness.
THE dismissal by a Quezon City judge of the rebellion case against Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr., his son, ARMM governor Zaldy Ampatuan and 22 others should strengthen the case filed by relatives of journalists who were among those killed in the November 23 massacre before the Asean Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission (AICHR).
The journalists’ relatives are holding the Arroyo government responsible for the Nov. 23 carnage. In their suit filed last February, the relatives said “clearly, all of those responsible for the carnage are agents of the Philippine State. Their acts in connection with the 23 November 2009 Maguindanao massacre are attributable under international law to the Republic of the Philippines.”
This week, three of the petitioners, Glen Salaysay, son of Cotabato City journalist Napoleon Salaysay, Noemi Parcon, wife of Koronadal City journalist Joel Parcon, and Feulen Sumagang, cousin of UNTV reporter Julito Evardo, were in Jakarta, where the AICHR is based, to follow up on their suit accompanied by their lawyer, Harry Roque of CenterLaw Philippines.
Pulitika2010 