A dozen scions of wealthy families, apparently spoiled brats, were reported to airport authorities for unruly behavior during a recent Philippine Airlines flight from Beijing to Manila.
One of the young men is reportedly the son of a billionaire Chinese-Filipino businessman engaged in condominium and mall projects.
The young men got condoms out of their pockets which they turned into balloons and threw these around the plane.
Some passengers complained about the horseplay.
When the plane landed in Manila, the flight crew reported the young men to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) police which sent a team to arrest them.
One of the young men then called up the office of Naia General Manager Jose Angel Honrado while they were about to be arrested.
The spoiled brats were promptly released.
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Despite his impeccable credentials, Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya doesn’t know how to run a vital government agency.
Abaya, a graduate of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, is still groping around months after he was appointed chief of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC).
I am a frequent traveler around the country and I noticed that most of our airports are poorly maintained, with stinking toilets, leaking roofs, faulty air-conditioning systems and malfunctioning X-ray machines.
The money collected from each passenger as terminal fee is apparently not being used for airport maintenance.
The fees collected from all airports in the country involves a HUGE amount every day.
Abaya should make an accounting of where the money goes.
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Two employees at the Court of Appeals (CA) are making a killing selling decisions to litigants who can afford to pay.
These corrupt employees are assigned at a certain section in the CA.
When an appeal is sent to the appellate court, the papers are filed in that section.
The two employees contact the litigant and offer to “fix” the case in the litigant’s favor.
The duo then gets in touch with the assistants of a justice to whom the appeal is assigned.
Each justice is provided with lawyer subordinates who write decisions for the justice.
Because of the volume of cases they handle, most justices leave the crafting of the decision to their assistants.
Some just sign the decisions without reading them, according to my CA mole.
The innocent justice, who’s busy making money on other big revenue-making cases, signs the decision and is left out of the deal.
In street lingo, the justice was nabukulan (made a fool of).
Most justices are wise to the ways of their assistants, and make them the conduits to litigants.
That’s the way many cases are decided at the Court of Appeals.
That’s how our justice system works.
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By the way, a conduit between justices and litigants who had pending appealed cases at the CA branch in Cebu has been elected to a high office in the province.
In this country, it seems that it pays to be corrupt.
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A tourist, Levi Rishi, goes around with plenty of armed bodyguards.
When he goes out of Bellagio Condominium Tower I in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City, he is escorted by two motorcycle-riding uniformed policemen.
The policemen sport a patch on their breasts identifying them as members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG).
Rishi is not even a resident alien. Why does he need all those armed bodyguards ?
More important, who provides his bodyguards?