New President

[robert k]

12 hours ago, Methersgate said:

Sunshine Mallari Capinpin was killed by gunmen who killed her uncle in Pampanga a few hours ago. She had been an enthusiastic supporter of Duterte... just collateral damage, of course...

I am not going to post the pictures of her corpse which you will find soon enough in Philippines media.

I suppose, the first question I should have asked is why this post is not in "The News Desk-General Philippine News" and why it is in the thread "New President" unless you were showing bias and already trying to lay the tragedy at the feet of the president without knowing any details? Quite a lot of spin here. I won't categorically say you are wrong, but I do want to apply the brake until more is known.

[mogo51]

I agree with Robert K.  There seems to be a few here that have formed pre mature judgements. 

I see no connection with Duterte in any of these articles, other than ill informed conclusions.  What we do see possibly is a drug inspired territorial dispute that MAY have risen its head due to 'drugs' being brought into prominence by his outspoken comments - but he is hardly to blame for that!

The girl is sadly a victim of her family connection.  But more will be revealed as investigations continue we would hope.

 

 

[MikeSwede]

Yes, it is a feeling of suspicion that triggers these thoughts of cause and effect, not hard facts, as far as my comments concern.

In the case of the Pampanga shooting, very little is known, even the date of the event has been wrongly reported by many. Police has so far been very open about their activities against suspected drug-dealers, this looks like a private thing between the uncle and someone in his sphere of interest. Pure speculation, all of the above.

My "fear" (not the quivering kind), is that the words allegedly and suspected, will be taken as a permission to go ahead and shoot. And this is not the doing of Duterte, he only cheers the consensus on for doing so. It's the perception by someone holding the gun, the he has legal grounds to pull the trigger by a notion of suspicion. This has nothing in common with robberies and such, as they are ordinary crimes.

No sarcasm in any of the above, just a simple layman venting his thoughts.

[mogo51]

Mike,

I agree with much of what you say.  IMO we all need to drop off the Duterte thing until we have had time to truly and honestly assess his actions once he has had some time as the President.

I see the point about some of his 'out there' comments and how they can be misconstrued by 'radical' locals and that is the problem.

[Jollygoodfellow]

On 6/12/2016 at 7:51 PM, Larry45 said:

 But I have no sympathy for those who are shirtless in public.  How hard is it to borrow a singlet / "wife beater" and just pull it up over your beer belly to get some ventilation while you're "drunkenly bewildered" out on the streets late at night?  Drunks and addicts don't seem to have any class these days.       

Just because you're on the street shirtless in a hot country does not mean you are drunk. Look at your own avatar showing to the public, shirtless playing a guitar. 

[Larry45]

15 hours ago, Jollygoodfellow said:

Just because you're on the street shirtless in a hot country does not mean you are drunk. Look at your own avatar showing to the public, shirtless playing a guitar. 

If I was shirtless on a city street at 2am, playing guitar...there's a good chance I would be drunk.  And I was being facetious in my post, should have used one of those new emoticons.  

[Old55]

Is that a pink guitar? Keeping in mind my avatar is perfectly....... 

Edited June 14, 2016 by Old55

[Methersgate]

Today's edition of the "Wall Street Journal" is not optimistic:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hollow-promises-of-a-filipino-populist-1465834114

"On Jan. 18 at 8:42 pm, five gunmen came over the back wall of a home in the upper-middle-class Metrogate Silang Estates Village in Cavite province, south of Manila, to find five people having dinner on the veranda. As they searched the five, one of them, a retired U.S. Air Force veteran, apparently made a too-sudden move. In the next instant, according to CCTV footage, the vet was shot dead. The other four were terrorized, brutalized and robbed.

The aftermath of that robbery illustrates both the appeal of Rodrigo Duterte, who in May was elected the Philippines’ president in a landslide, and the likelihood that his promise to execute criminals will end in bitter disappointment.

Nearly five months after that home invasion, what should have been an easily solved case remains open, like far too many cases across the country. Such lawlessness was a major factor in bringing the 71-year-old Mr. Duterte, who will be sworn in June 30, to power.

Part of the problem is that criminality is so ingrained into the Philippine system. Members of the police are often suspected of protecting criminals or participating in the crimes themselves. Mr. Duterte’s pledge to use extrajudicial murder to impose peace and order could mean asking the police to execute their own accomplices or even fellow officers.

It also has very little to do with what’s wrong with the Philippines. Mr. Duterte professes to oppose crime, yet he intends to give Ferdinand Marcos, the strongman who stole billions of dollars from the public coffers while he was in power, a hero’s burial. Mr. Duterte also announced that he will pardon former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has faced charges of corruption and resided in hospital since 2011. Moreover, his appointed spokesman, Salvador Panelo, was the lawyer for officials accused of killing 58 people, including 34 journalists, in the town of Ampatuan in 2009.

What the country really needs is systemic reform and an end to impunity, not masked justice dispensed by gunmen from the back of motorcycles.

At any given time, 10% of the Philippine population is working overseas because of the scant opportunities at home. This applies not just to laborers and domestic helpers but to highly skilled workers such as doctors, nurses, engineers and accountants. Those left behind often turn to crime and drugs. The country has the highest rate of methamphetamine use in Southeast Asia.

The Asian Development Bank noted in its most recent report that “sustaining strong growth will require policy continuity supporting the development of infrastructure and human capital, improvements to the investment climate, and governance reform.” That’s a tall order, and it’s unclear how committed Mr. Duterte is to policy continuity. Despite significant progress made by departing President Benigno S. Aquino to clean up government corruption during the past six years, the country actually dropped 10 notches in the 2016 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, to 95th of 186 countries surveyed.

The country’s education system is ranked 96th in the world, far behind its neighbors Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia. In some areas of the country only 30% of students complete primary school.

The Philippines also needs to break the economic stranglehold of an interlocking web of families that maintains near-feudal control over most major sectors. This elite has long resisted real land reform while using cartels to control commodities, electricity pricing, telecommunications and other basic needs.

There is no antitrust law in the Philippines, and reformers have struggled for years against the opposition of these elite families to push through a competition law. Mr. Duterte is unlikely to be above this power. He is hardly a true outsider and already some of his cabinet appointments are from well-entrenched families with ties to his Davao City bastion.

Perhaps Mr. Duterte could fool us all. But his public statements—incendiary, contradictory and sarcastic—are hardly comforting. He has said, for instance, that some of the 176 journalists murdered over the past 30 years, including a fair number in his city, deserved to die.

In Davao City, any gangster or drug peddler with half a brain knew to leave for less dangerous territories when the Duterte crackdown came. But that can’t be true for a whole nation. If Mr. Duterte’s presidency turns quixotic, it risks inciting another upheaval like the movements that brought down two previous presidents. And as the Philippines has learned to its sorrow, running a country by public putsch creates bigger problems than it solves."

 

 

A footnote:

On a point of information, there is an anti trust law - passed two years ago - the Philippine Competition Act, which established the Philippine Competition Commission - but like the RH law it has been left under funded and gutless. It has taken no action over the shameful carve up of the telecoms sector two weeks ago, when San Mig sold out to Globe and Smart, after Telstra gave up on realising that the competition law would not protect a foreign new entrant.    

Edited June 15, 2016 by Methersgate

[robert k]

2 hours ago, Methersgate said:

Today's edition of the "Wall Street Journal" is not optimistic:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hollow-promises-of-a-filipino-populist-1465834114

"On Jan. 18 at 8:42 pm, five gunmen came over the back wall of a home in the upper-middle-class Metrogate Silang Estates Village in Cavite province, south of Manila, to find five people having dinner on the veranda. As they searched the five, one of them, a retired U.S. Air Force veteran, apparently made a too-sudden move. In the next instant, according to CCTV footage, the vet was shot dead. The other four were terrorized, brutalized and robbed.

The aftermath of that robbery illustrates both the appeal of Rodrigo Duterte, who in May was elected the Philippines’ president in a landslide, and the likelihood that his promise to execute criminals will end in bitter disappointment.

Nearly five months after that home invasion, what should have been an easily solved case remains open, like far too many cases across the country. Such lawlessness was a major factor in bringing the 71-year-old Mr. Duterte, who will be sworn in June 30, to power.

Part of the problem is that criminality is so ingrained into the Philippine system. Members of the police are often suspected of protecting criminals or participating in the crimes themselves. Mr. Duterte’s pledge to use extrajudicial murder to impose peace and order could mean asking the police to execute their own accomplices or even fellow officers.

It also has very little to do with what’s wrong with the Philippines. Mr. Duterte professes to oppose crime, yet he intends to give Ferdinand Marcos, the strongman who stole billions of dollars from the public coffers while he was in power, a hero’s burial. Mr. Duterte also announced that he will pardon former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has faced charges of corruption and resided in hospital since 2011. Moreover, his appointed spokesman, Salvador Panelo, was the lawyer for officials accused of killing 58 people, including 34 journalists, in the town of Ampatuan in 2009.

What the country really needs is systemic reform and an end to impunity, not masked justice dispensed by gunmen from the back of motorcycles.

At any given time, 10% of the Philippine population is working overseas because of the scant opportunities at home. This applies not just to laborers and domestic helpers but to highly skilled workers such as doctors, nurses, engineers and accountants. Those left behind often turn to crime and drugs. The country has the highest rate of methamphetamine use in Southeast Asia.

The Asian Development Bank noted in its most recent report that “sustaining strong growth will require policy continuity supporting the development of infrastructure and human capital, improvements to the investment climate, and governance reform.” That’s a tall order, and it’s unclear how committed Mr. Duterte is to policy continuity. Despite significant progress made by departing President Benigno S. Aquino to clean up government corruption during the past six years, the country actually dropped 10 notches in the 2016 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, to 95th of 186 countries surveyed.

The country’s education system is ranked 96th in the world, far behind its neighbors Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia. In some areas of the country only 30% of students complete primary school.

The Philippines also needs to break the economic stranglehold of an interlocking web of families that maintains near-feudal control over most major sectors. This elite has long resisted real land reform while using cartels to control commodities, electricity pricing, telecommunications and other basic needs.

There is no antitrust law in the Philippines, and reformers have struggled for years against the opposition of these elite families to push through a competition law. Mr. Duterte is unlikely to be above this power. He is hardly a true outsider and already some of his cabinet appointments are from well-entrenched families with ties to his Davao City bastion.

Perhaps Mr. Duterte could fool us all. But his public statements—incendiary, contradictory and sarcastic—are hardly comforting. He has said, for instance, that some of the 176 journalists murdered over the past 30 years, including a fair number in his city, deserved to die.

In Davao City, any gangster or drug peddler with half a brain knew to leave for less dangerous territories when the Duterte crackdown came. But that can’t be true for a whole nation. If Mr. Duterte’s presidency turns quixotic, it risks inciting another upheaval like the movements that brought down two previous presidents. And as the Philippines has learned to its sorrow, running a country by public putsch creates bigger problems than it solves."

 

 

A footnote:

On a point of information, there is an anti trust law - passed two years ago - the Philippine Competition Act, which established the Philippine Competition Commission - but like the RH law it has been left under funded and gutless. It has taken no action over the shameful carve up of the telecoms sector two weeks ago, when San Mig sold out to Globe and Smart, after Telstra gave up on realising that the competition law would not protect a foreign new entrant.    

This is a garbage piece. Duterte wasn't president on January 18th was he? This should be an Aquino article shouldn't it? Pork Barrel? The perception of corruption slipping 10 notches is correct and you can lay it at the door of Aquino. Who was president when Telestra bowed out? Total smear campaign.

[Tukaram (Tim)]

We must have read different articles... they did not blame Duterte for the attack or the case still being open.  They said

Quote

The aftermath of that robbery illustrates both the appeal of Rodrigo Duterte, who in May was elected the Philippines’ president in a landslide, and the likelihood that his promise to execute criminals will end in bitter disappointment.

Nearly five months after that home invasion, what should have been an easily solved case remains open, like far too many cases across the country. Such lawlessness was a major factor in bringing the 71-year-old Mr. Duterte, who will be sworn in June 30, to power.

So, the poor performance of law enforcement is what helped Duterte get elected, according to the article. 

They did go on to say he will probably not be able to rise above the power of the elite, which I think is also true. Nothing personal against him, just the true state of of this country we call home.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Tukaram (Tim)
half my typed comment did not post...