Philippines News

Philippines officials say at least 37 people are dead or missing in two landslides that struck a municipality in the Davao Region in Mindanao within 11 hours.

Houses lie flattened after two consecutive landslides hit Masara Village, Compostela Valley province, about 840 kilometres southern Philippines on Sunday, Sept.

Filipino-American Ryan Roberts will wear the Mister International Philippines sash in the international male pageant to be held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on Nov. 23.

After outshining 14 other candidates during the pageant’s night held Sept. 1 at the A.Venue Events Mall in Makati, Roberts walked home with P20,000, a trophy, and the prestige to be called Mister International Philippines 2008 winner.

Twenty-four-year-old Ryan, who practically grew up in the US, graduated at Fort Walton High School and had served the US Army 101st Airborne Division for four years in Iraq. He is a product of an interracial marriage between his Filipino mother and American father who met in Clark Air Base more than two decades ago.

At six feet tall, Ryan was a crowd favorite during the event and received an overwhelming applause when he gave his answer during the interview portion. He was asked: “Which one is more important: your family or your friends, why?” “Family is the most important thing, but friends are also important. To me, family first and then friends.”

Ryan, who is also into mixed martial arts and surfing, grinned before the judges.

KORONADAL CITY – Bounty hunters have reportedly arrived in droves in Central Mindanao, lured by the substantial reward for the capture of two notorious Muslim separatist rebels who led the deadly attacks on several Christian-dominated towns in Lanao del Sur early this month.

Sources said the mass arrival of the bounty hunters was prompted by the government’s decision to double to P20 million the reward for any information that could lead to the capture of Umbra Kato and Abdurahman Macapaar, alias Commander Bravo, of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The MILF leadership, which disowned the attacks, said the government’s bounty offer would only aggravate the peace problem in Mindanao.

The bounty hunters include members of the Ilaga Reformed Movement (IRM), a group that claimed to have evolved from the dreaded Ilaga group of the1970s, which helped the government fight communist and Muslim rebels. IRM claims to have 20,000 members.

To each his own style,” Sen. Panfilo Lacson said in reaction to Senate President Manuel Villar’s declaring his intention to run for president in 2010.

Lacson said all who are eyeing the presidency must be allowed to do what they think will work for them, and did not find it appropriate to comment on Villar’s move.

Villar, Lacson, Senators Manuel Roxas II, Loren Legarda, Richard Gordon and Francis Escudero are said to be eyeing the presidency in 2010.

Lacson also disputed Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s assessment that it would cost a presidential hopeful P3 billion to run.

“If you really want to spend, you can spend even up to P10 billion,” Lacson said, adding that a campaign could be run on a budget if the candidate would not be lavish and not give pay-offs to cheat and win.

He said he did not spend billions when he ran for president in 2004. He lost to President Arroyo, whom critics accused of cheating her way to victory.

A staunch administration critic yesterday admitted the struggle to expose anomalies in the government can be really tiring and one can’t help but wonder if it is all worth it.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson made that assessment as he admitted the recent Supreme Court (SC) ruling on executive privilege invoked by former socio-economic secretary Romulo Neri dealt a serious blow to the campaign against corruption.

Lacson said that like him, Filipinos may be getting sick and tired of anomalies and more often than not, they don’t care anymore.

“They say nothing is happening, there is no closure but we were able to save $329 million. That is around P16 billion,” Lacson told radio station dwIZ.

Ernesto Manila, 56, a businessman, was allegedly drunk while he was driving his Mitsubishi Pajero (plate WPW 471) in San Mateo, Rizal, on Aug. 8. He plowed through a group of six people waiting for their ride home at 10 p.m.

Instead of alighting to help his victims, Manila reportedly backed his car up and ran over his victims, who were already down on the pavement, for the second time.

Two of his victims were killed and the rest were critically injured.

Manila is now detained at San Mateo police station, but he’s allegedly made to sleep in the chief’s office instead of inside the jail.

If true, the San Mateo police should be investigated for giving VIP treatment to a suspect.

MANILA, Philippines—A so-called Consortium on Electoral Reforms (CER) composed of lawmakers from the two chambers of Congress is railroading the passage of what it dubs an electoral reform law that is really nothing but a perpetuation of the worst features of traditional politics or “trapo” (dirty-mop politics in Tagalog slang).

Without anyone really knowing it, the CER had already held a series of workshop conferences in which the major political parties, party-list groups, members of the academe and so-called civil society reviewed House Bill 3655, “An Act Strengthening the Political Party System” and proposed changes thereto. Last Aug. 30 the bill was passed on third reading, but due to protests against its having been railroaded, it was sent back two days later by the House majority to “further plenary deliberations.”

The railroading was only too obvious. By the time the bill was up for third reading, its title had become “An Act Strengthening the Political Party System, Appropriating Funds Therefor and Other Purposes.” The second clause shows that the proposed law is nothing but a way of channeling state funds (what the bill calls “state subsidy”) to political parties. In short, the bill seeks to fatten trapo parties with pork barrel in time for the 2010 elections. Senate versions of the bill similarly mention the state subsidy to political parties.

Principally authored by Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, HB 3655 is long on rhetoric, short on transparency.

MANILA, Philippines—The choice of former first lady Imelda Marcos as “guest of honor” at a youth leadership conference tomorrow in Baguio City has raised a furor among education officials, as well as various teacher and student groups.

The controversial wife of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos will be honored for her “contribution to Philippine culture and arts” at the DepEd’s annual National Leadership Training for Student Government Officers at Teachers Camp.

The four-day conference is a project of the DepEd’s Center for Students and Co-Curricular Affairs, or CSCA.

At the same event, the department will formally designate Fil-Am actor Sam Milby as its “youth spokesperson.”

Teacher and student groups, some DepEd executives, as well as top officials of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) expressed “shock and dismay” at the CSCA’s choice of role model.

MANILA, Sept. 6 (Xinhua) -- A leftist political coalition said Saturday that it will question the presence of "overstaying US troops" in the southern Philippines before the Southeast Asian country's Supreme Court later this month.

Bayan, or New Patriotic Alliance, said it filed last year a petition questioning the constitutionality of the Philippines-United States Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and that the high court has set oral arguments about it for Sept. 19.

The U.S. troops have been in the Philippines' southern region of Mindanao for six years, rather than a "temporary" stay of six months in accordance with the Philippine Senate's deliberations on the agreement in 1999, Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes said in a statement. Bayan is a Philippine political coalition of more than 1,000 grassroots and progressive organizations.

"The problem with the VFA is that it does not define in clear and uncertain terms the scope, duration of stay and the extent of the engagement of US troops. In some ways, it is worse than the previous US bases agreement because of its vagueness. For all intents and purposes, an unlimited number of US troops can stay here for an unlimited period of time, even if there are no joint military exercises," Reyes said.

On the same day, leading Philippine newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that the so-called "visiting forces" seem to have become a permanent deployment in the southern Philippines.

Edgar Araojo, a political science professor at the Western Mindanao State University, told the newspaper that he had found several U.S. military facilities established by the Americans in Zamboanga, Mindanao.

Senators can wring their hands in despair, but the Supreme Court ruling on executive privilege in the case of Romulo Neri has become final. The SC vote did not change; the court merely reaffirmed its original 9-6 vote that tilted in favor of the administration following the appointment of former labor secretary Arturo Brion to the tribunal in March.

The SC ruling covered three questions posed to Neri during the Senate inquiry into the aborted national broadband network deal between the Department of Transportation and Communications and China’s ZTE Corp. Neri had started his Senate testimony with candor, disclosing that he had informed President Arroyo about a P200-million offer from then elections chief Benjamin Abalos in exchange for an endorsement of the NBN deal by the National Economic and Development Authority, which Neri used to head.

A public official’s failure to act on a case of bribery can be a criminal offense, and senators wanted to get more details from Neri about how the President had reacted to his disclosure. But behind closed doors, the President’s Senate allies reminded Neri about executive privilege and he shut up.

By this time, regardless of the SC ruling, it looks like Neri is happily ensconced in his new post as head of the Social Security System, and has made up his mind to take his story to the grave.

COTABATO CITY, Philippines -- An official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said Saturday the renewed conflict in Mindanao has been extremely violent and it was stepping up assistance to displaced civilians whose numbers he estimated at up to half a million.

"Mindanao has suffered its worst fighting since 2003," Dominik Stillhart, ICRC deputy director for operations, said in a news conference Saturday. He flew in recently from Geneva.

He said up to half a million people have been affected by the hostilities and tens of thousands of them had to flee their homes in Mindanao.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) reported that over 200,000 people were displaced by the fighting in at least three Mindanao provinces.

Saying the Mindanao conflict was extremely violent, Stillhart said the ICRC was stepping up its relief operations to internally displaced people in the provinces of Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte, site of the sporadic fighting between government forces and Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago reminded presidential aspirants yesterday that they would have to spend at least P3 billion for their campaign in the 2010 elections. She said that according to political experts, the cost of a presidential campaign has increased from P2 billion in previous elections to P3 billion.

Santiago, who ran and lost to Fidel Ramos in the 1992 presidential elections, said she had long dropped any ambition to become president. And with the funds needed, “I have absolutely the chances of a snowball in hell, I’ll melt immediately,” Santiago said.

But Santiago said she found nothing wrong with Senate President Manuel Villar’s decision to declare his candidacy for the 2010 presidential polls.

“He is not campaigning. He is merely declaring. The point in the election code, you have certain activities that are prohibited, including putting up billboards in effect obtaining exposure for the candidacy or otherwise eliciting a positive response from the public,” Santiago said.

The people must concentrate their anger and condemnation on the US-Arroyo regime as directly responsible on the deaths and damages of the people in Mindanao caused by the escalation of the armed clashes between the AFP and the MILF.

The problem can be rooted to the US-dictated two pronged militarist policy of the regime which is the all-out war against the revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) while neutralizing the Moro seccessionist movement of the MILF thru a deceptive and bogus peace process to finish the revolutionary movement in 2010.

The militarist clique in the Arroyo regime never expected that the Memorandum of Agreement on the Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) will ignite the chaos and war in Mindanao. This secret and hasty deal resulted to violent reaction and opposition from the pro and anti-Arroyo reactionary camp and the fake president will even face impeachment because of violations of the constitution.

Arroyo got the worst fear of losing her warlord allies in Mindanao that helped her cheat the 2004 elections. Her ulterior motive of using the MOA-AD as a stepping stone for charter change (cha-cha) to remain in Malacanang was also exposed.

The MILF's disgust and anger have basis when it was proven that the Arroyo regime is not sincere in the peace talks and on the agreement on ancestral domain and instead used these as a trap to demobilized and surrender of MILF.

' The Moro Resistance and Liberation Organization on Friday urged Muslim rebels to continue their armed struggle for independence in the southern Philippines after Manila scrapped a territorial deal and ...

Despite opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, the Philippine Department of Health will support the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in addition to encouraging education on the topic and ...

Malaysia has sent crack troops and navy ships to the Gulf of Aden after two of its vessels were seized by pirates last month, according to reports Wednesday.

A convoy of US and Philippine troops pass on a village in Jolo town in the southern Filipino province of Sulu.

The ground is laid for a return to the ancestral domain aspect and other substantive matters of peace negotiation when this become more viable, even if in the next administration already.

A homemade bomb explosion Monday ripped through a commuter bus, killing at least 8 people in the southern Philippines, where security forces are battling Moro rebels, officials said.