NTF-ELCAC Spokesman Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. PNA photo
Alex Padilla, one of the 28 University of the Philippines students and alumni in the list of the Armed Forces of the Philippines “who became NPA (died or captured),” noted that the unsigned apology of the AFP Information Center that released the erroneous and egregious list is” hardly one.”
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, whose image as one of the decent few in the Duterte cabinet has been dented with that list, has relieved AFP’’s Deputy Director for Intelligence, Major General Alex Luna for what he called, “an unforgivable lapse.”
“It is a good first step but it may not be nearly enough,” said Padilla whose stint with the government includes having been Philhealth president and chief executive officer and chief negotiator in the peace process with the communist rebels.
Journalist Roel Landingin, one of the 28 named in the latest red-tagging offensive of the Duterte government, expressed concern over the credibility of information that the military has and uses.
“It’s concerning because it’s the type of info they use for military operations,” Landingin said in an online press conference on Saturday afternoon. “Imagine if nag-reunion tayo (we hold a reunion) and they misconstrued it as an NPA assembly and pwedeng maging subject ng military operation (it could be subjected to a military operation),” he added.
The presence of Landingin in the online presscon, along with five others in the list — lawyers Alex Padilla and Raffy Aquino, playwright Liza Magtoto, development worker Marie Lisa Dacanay, former journalist and government official Elmer Mercado — effectively debunked what was posted last Friday, Jan. 22, on the Facebook wall of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Information Exchange.
That post, which was taken down later but not after it had been widely shared, carried the heading: “Some of the UP students who became NPA (died or captured).”
There is something very wrong about the statement of AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Carlito Galvez praising the President for agreeing to the rule of law.
Galvez said that Wednesday when he announced that the AFP won’t be reconvening for now a general court martial to try Senator Antonio Trillanes IV following the denial by Judge Andres B. Soriano of the Regional Trial Court NCR Branch 148 of the motion of the Department of Justice to issue a hold departure order and issue a warrant of arrest for the senator for the charge of coup d’etat that the court dismissed seven years ago.
“We have already discussed this in a meeting and the President already decided that we will go to the courts,” Galvez told reporters.
He added: “We have to praise the President because he agreed to the rule of law.” AFP Chief Carlito Galvez shows Pres. Duterte the command saber on the sidelines of the joint AFP-PNP command conference at the Malacañan Palace on Oct. 4, 2018. Malacañang photo by Alfred Frias.
Former Scout Ranger Abe Purugganan, co-founder of the Young Officers Union,
a group of rebel military officers in the late 80s, who is now a diehard Duterte supporter posted in his Facebook wall his assessment of the national situation.
Titled “People’s Intelligence Assessment,” it ends with “For the information of the sovereign Filipino people. For widest dissemination. Please share it.”
The assessment of Purugganan, who served as undersecretary for special concerns under Gloria Arroyo’s presidency, is intriguing. If this is the kind of reports the President gets, no wonder, he is paranoid.
The harassment that journalist Julie Alipala of the Philippine Daily Inquirer is being subjected to because her story of the killing of seven persons in Patikul Sulu contradicts the military version underscores once again the higher risks that reporters in the provinces face compared to those in Metro Manila. Vicious, condemnable FB post
A post in the Facebook wall of Phil Leaks dubs Julie as a certified paid hack who defends the terrorist group, the Abu Sayyaf. The comments are irresponsible and vicious. Examples: Bong Media said, “Dapat ito ang na-ambush.” Ricardo Macapagal said, “Tokhang yan.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines issued a statement condemning “the dubious Facebook group Phil Leaks” and demanded that “Facebook take down the page Phil Leaks for endangering Alipala and other known critics of this Rodrigo Duterte government.”
Pres. Duterte and Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo in a tête-à-tête , Sept. 11, 2018
There were two things that stood out in President Duterte’s one-hour-and-a-half hour tête-à-tête with Presidential Legal Counsel Sal Panelo: he didn’t want to talk about his health and he is obsessed with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV.
After about ten minutes of monologue defending his attempt to nullify the amnesty granted to Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV by then President Benigno Aquino III Panelo wanted to talk about his health: “Puntahan naman natin ang mga agam-a gam ng taumbayan kasama na ang critics nyo na si Joma Sison. Sinasabi na kayo ay may sakit. Ano po ang masasabi nyo tungkol sa inyong kalusugan para marnig ng taumbayan?”
Duterte’s answer was about the alleged conspiracy of the Community Party of the Philippines and the Magdalo to topple him: “Alam nyo itong si Sison, pati itong Magdalo, pati itong ayaw sa akin, yung talagang hindi tumanggap sa akin ever since noong election, they have combined and we have the evidence and we have the conversation provided by a foreign country sympathetic to us. We don’t have the sophistication but the connections will be shown maybe any day now. I asked that it be declassified at ipakita nila sa lahat. Nahihigop lahat . They were in constant communication.
Panelo tried to stir back the conversation to the President’s health: “Sa punto po ng kalusugan, talagang malusog na malusog kayo, nakikita ng mga tao.”
Pres. Duterte upon arrival from Jordan says Solicitor General Calida was source of info on Sen. Trillanes alleged missing amnesty papers.
Three days after Pres. Duterte attempted to nullify the amnesty granted to Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV by his predecessor Pres. Benigno Aquino III, the institutions that he expected to execute his order and support him blindly did not deliver forcing him to backtrack.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, in his media briefing in Amman, Jordan last Friday before the presidential party returned to Manila after official visits to Israel and Jordan, announced that the President has decided to abide with the rule of law.
Roque said Pres. Duterte had convened a cabinet meeting while he was in Jordan about his order to arrest Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV as contained in his Proclamation 572 : “Kahapon po, binigyan ko ng kumpirmasyon na nagkaroon po ng pagpupulong si Presidente sa lahat po ng Gabinete na sumama sa biyaheng ito. Pinag-usapan po nila kung ano ang magiging posisyon ng administrasyon tungkol po dito sa pag-revoke ng amnesty kay Senator Trillanes. At matapos po ang mahabang talakayan, nagdesisyon ang Presidente that he will abide with the rule of law; aantayin po niya ang desisyon ng hukuman, ng Regional Trial Court kung sila ay mag-i-issue ng warrant of arrest. So uulitin ko po, desisyon ng Presidente is he will allow the judicial process to proceed, and he will await the issuance of the appropriate warrant of arrest if there is indeed one to be issued ‘no before Senator Trillanes is arrested and apprehended.”
Duterte’s plan to have Trillanes put back in jail has backfired.
By Segundo Eclar Romero
Duterte has set the stage for sacrificing Jose Calida. He has said he issued Presidential Proclamation 572 on the say so or Calida as Solicitor-General. Duterte, of course, knows that targeting Trillanes was a joint project between him and Calida. They both hated the Senator, and would take the first opportunity, no matter how clumsy, to neutralize him. Calida has in a sense borrowed Presidential Powers with the President’s complicity to try to extricate himself from the charge of conflict of interest in the way his security agency business cornered government contracts. It was a long shot, but Duterte has a way out — he could always put the entire blame on Calida, if the plan backfires.
Of course the plan has backfired. It has been so indefensible at its face value that no one was willing to lay his reputation on the line for the revocation of the amnesty. Calida clumsily tried to distance himself from the amnesty revocation action, saying with a straight face before media that he had nothing to do with it. But the DND and AFP who did not want to be left holding the bag pointed to Calida as the prime mover. He had tried to get the AFP and DND unnecessarily compromised in the caper, trying to dupe the AFP into arresting Trillanes without a proper warrant.
So now Duterte is poised to cut Calida loose, unless either of the two RTCs and the Supreme Court sustain Calida and Duterte and issue a warrant, or, in the case of the Supreme Court, refuse to issue a TRO against the arrest.
Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV holds his first press conference in the Senate after his release from a 7-year detention.I was ambivalent when I first saw Antonio Trillanes IV on television. But there he was, a very young man, taking a clear and unequivocal stand against evil in government. My ambivalence may have something to do with four years of brainwashing called law school.
Like military cadets, we were brainwashed to think that the Constitution was supreme and that change had to be through constitutional means. Never mind that as a freshman at the UP College of Law in 1986, we had no Constitution to study but for a two-page document known as the freedom constitution. Never mind too that we started our law studies with a brand new extra-constitutional regime that was the regime of Corazon Cojuanco-Aquino.
Perhaps, the ambivalence may have been due to the many coups staged against Mrs. Aquino, a regime that I was willing to die for. There too is the fact that as a high school activist, I once told a group of PMAers who hitched a ride with my family in Baguio that I hoped that they would not end up being fascists.
Sen. Antonio Trillanes delivering his privilege speech on the revocation of his amnesty.
If Pres. Duterte thought that Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV would cower in fear and hide when he ordered the revocation of the amnesty granted to him and other officials who took a stand against the presidency of Gloria Arroyo on July 27, 2003 at then Oakwood Hotel (now Ascott) at the Makati Commercial Center and on November 29, 2007 at The Peninsula Manila hotel in Makati.
No, the 47-year old senator, who was imprisoned for more than seven years (he won his senatorial seat in 2007 while he was in detention) called Duterte a coward.
“Mr. Duterte, duwag ka. Inantay mo pang makaalis ka bago mo nilabas itong proclamation mo. (Mr. Duterte, you are a coward. You waited until you have left before your released this proclamation.)
