If we listen to lawmakers talk about the grisly kidnap slay of a Korean businessman right inside the Philippine National Police headquarters in Camp Crame, President Rodrigo Duterte is to blame for giving crooked cops a license to kill.
Led by Senator Leila de Lima, herself linked by Duterte for allegedly using drug money to finance her run to the Senate, other legislators like Reps. Rudy Fariñas, Edcel Lagman and Lito Atienza said policemen carrying out the government’s take-no-prisoners Operation Tokhang are intoxicated with power because of President Duterte’s pronouncement to back them up at all costs.
This became more evident when Duterte ignored calls for PNP Chief Ronald dela Rosa to resign for losing control of his men in the killing of Korean business executive Jee Ick Joo inside PNP headquarters. The crime scene of Jee’s murder brings to mind the gun slaying of Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. at the tarmac of Manila International Airport. The brazen murder of Ninoy Aquino at the country’s international gateway gained worldwide attention because military men and policemen were also suspected of being behind the assassination.
They named the airport after Aquino but the crime has never been really solved despite the fact that his widow Cory Aquino and son Noynoy both became president.
Jee’s kidnappers and killers—three policemen and their civilian assets—have been accused with the main suspect PO2 Ricky Sta. Isabel arrested. But the buck seems to have stopped with Sta. Isabel while his immediate supervisor Police Director General Dela Rosa was cleared by President Duterte of any culpability. In most police organizations in the world, the head would have been sacked even without any direct link to the crime committed. More honorable men would have resigned in shame for allowing such an abuse of authority to happen in his own backyard.
Not Dela Rosa, who smugly left it to Boss Digong to decide his fate.
Is there any conspiracy to cover up the involvement of higher PNP officials? I doubt that we would ever know.
House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez who earlier was among the first to demand Dela Rosa’s resignation has been appeased as he and Duterte attended Bato’s 55th birthday party. The trio was photographed smiling and chummy like buddies at a high school reunion. All are from Davao City.
The web of crime and corruption at PNP was not the only damning revelation in government. This week, during the Senate Blue Ribbon committee hearing, a story of how Bureau of Immigration officials entrapped themselves into a P30-million bribery case unfolded. Through committee chairman Senator Dick Gordon’s probing questions, former BI officials Al Argosino and Michael Robles were made to admit they met with representatives and emissaries of Macau online gambling lord Jack Lam at a luxury casino resort near Manila Bay. The meeting which lasted late into the night, was capped by the turnover of three shopping bags containing an estimated P30 million. The BI officials claimed they took the money purportedly to use as evidence on Lam’s bribery attempt.
Gordon questioned Argosino’s story that he took the money home allegedly to use as evidence. The BI officials could not explain or justify why they met with Lam’s reps at a restaurant outside of the Bureau of Immigration offices. The whole scenario as narrated by the BI officials themselves was replete with inconsistencies and what Gordon described as “stupid” explanations.
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Donald Trump’s first two days in office proved to be bumpy with an estimated one million women marching in protest of his deprecating remarks on their rights.
Trump’s White House press office, instead of taking the women’s protest in stride as part of a working democracy, quibbled over the number of people that attended his inauguration at the US capitol. Press Secretary John Spicer and Presidential Assistant Kelly Anne Conway coined a new phrase called “alternative facts” to what they perceived as the press’ false reporting.
On his second day, Trump signed an executive order pulling the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership comprising Australia, Malaysia, Chile and other Asia-Pacific countries in a new global trade grouping. In the coming weeks, Trump will be meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The meeting with May is expected to be cordial as it has always been with these two transatlantic allies. But the one-on-one with Nieto could be contentious given that Trump, during the presidential campaign, ranted he would build a wall along the US—Mexican border and make Mexico foot the bill. Why would any country allow a wall to be built to isolate it and then pay for that wall?