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The tight group of journalists gathering in Hong Kong on a rainy summer morning had arrived from all over: Beijing, Taipei, New York, Madrid, Washington, Berkeley, and Munich.
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by Ed Lingao
SOMETIMES, ANGELINA ‘Angie’ Cauzo chats with her husband in front of a small family altar in their modest house in Talavera, Nueva Ecija. As stereotypical marital conversations go, the talk is always one-sided, with the wife pouring her heart out to her silent husband.
But then Julius Cesar Cauzo, radio commentator, vice president of the Nueva Ecija Press Club, and Angie’s husband, has good reason to be unresponsive. He has been dead for a year now, assassinated in broad daylight by a gunman in a province long known for its history of political violence.
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by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
MAJORITY OF the 12 political parties that fielded senatorial candidates in last May’s elections were able to register with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), but most of them still have a lot of explaining to do with the tax agency.
Ang Kapatiran, Bangon Pilipinas, the Democratic Party of the Philippines (DPP), and Makabayang Koalisyon ng Mamamayan (Makabayan) even failed to fulfill the most basic tax-related requirement for political parties: to register with the BIR.
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by Karol Ilagan
MUTUALLY reinforcing interests — all too often political interests — between national and local politicians to this day drives the selection of which local government units (LGUs) should be blessed with generous servings of projects funded with pork.
It has been dressed up to be an “equalizer,” but the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or simply, pork, remains very much a political tool for senators and congressmen who spread the bulk of their pork pesos to LGUs governed by their mother, father, sibling, cousin, or ally.
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by Charmaine Lirio
IT SEEMS the heads of five government corporations would not be the only ones on the chopping board for implementing the anomalous pork barrel projects recently reported by the Commission on Audit (COA). Now it looks like the state firms in question may themselves disappear while their combined 283 employees may go jobless.
The Governance Commission for Government-Owned or -Controlled Corporations (GCG) has recommended to President Benigno S. Aquino III the abolition of Zamboanga del Norte College Rubber Estate Corporation (ZREC) and National Agribusiness Corporation (NABCOR). In a speech last Aug. 23, Aquino himself said that the ZREC and NABCOR would be abolished because they had become “notorious for anomalies” and “instruments of corruption.”
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by Edz V. dela Cruz
FOR THE 2013 midterm elections, a company called the International Global Mining Exchange (IGME) donated P5 million to the campaign kitty of deposed President Joseph Estrada’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP). After winning the mayoralty seat of Manila, Estrada plucked IGME’s former president from his post at the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and appointed him as the new City Engineer of Manila.
IGME was PMP’s second highest donor last elections, with its P5 million trailing only businessman William Tiu Gatchalian’s P10-million donation.
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by Charmaine Lirio
LAGUNA GOVERNOR Emilio Ramon ‘ER’ Ejercito never got to have the success in the film industry that was enjoyed by his uncle Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada. But in the May 2013 elections, he managed to beat his more famous uncle — their clan’s political patriarch — in at least one aspect: the amount of funds he poured into his election campaign.
Read more…
| Posted Thursday, September 26th, 2013
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by Karol Ilagan
IMPLEMENTING THE Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) takes a long and layered process because it is a lump-sum item, which means that its purpose has yet to be identified during the budget year.
By the time it reaches its intended beneficiaries, a project funded by PDAF or pork barrel would have gone through at least three lawmakers, two members of the cabinet, or a governor, a mayor, or a nongovernment organization (NGO). Of course that’s assuming the intended beneficiaries get anything at all.
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by Malou Mangahas and Karol Ilagan
BOTH VETERANS of the “parliament of the streets,” they mounted separate failed, if high-level and issues-focused, campaigns for the Senate in the May 2013 elections. Yet while Ana Theresia ‘Risa’ Hontiveros Baraquel and Teodoro ‘Teddy’ Casino have disagreed on politics and policy issues, they now face similarly tight situations because of their latest election spending reports. In the Statement of Election Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE) they filed separately with the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Hontiveros of the Akbayan party-list group and Casiño of the Makabayan party declared spending their own money in the campaign in amounts much larger than their declared net worth or cash assets could justify.
In plain terms, their numbers just don’t add up quite well.
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by Karol Ilagan
THEY WERE supposedly set up to uplift the lives of those in need. Yet in their first few months of operation, they served a rather different, yet specific, purpose: to promote the candidacy of two legislative aspirants who eventually won and are now occupying seats in the Senate.
Senator Joseph Victor ‘JV’ G. Ejercito of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) and Senator Mary Grace Poe-Llamanzares of Team PNoy were each supported during the campaign by organizations formed in their name: JV Para sa Bayan Movement Inc. and the Friends of Grace Poe Foundation Inc., respectively.
