If Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano was really involved in the attack on Lapanday Foods Corp. in Davao City in April, then he has no business being in the Cabinet of President Digong.
That attack on the banana company, which was burned down, was an act of terrorism that also resulted in 100 employees being out of work.
The Duterte government has no place for terrorists.
Rodrigo Roa Duterte has been trying to reach out to the Left when he appointed leftists — Mariano, Judy Taguiwalo and Liza Maza — in his Cabinet.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), whose armed wing is the New People’s Army (NPA), probably takes Digong’s appeasement of them as a sign of weakness.
They’re very wrong, as the President is just trying to unite the nation which has been rocked by the world’s longest communist insurgency.
With the latest report on the attack on Lapanday, which has been confirmed by the intelligence community and some local officials, the President might even encourage the CA to reject Mariano’s confirmation. [The CA did so on Wednesday afternoon—Ed.]
From an organization that purports to protect the small people in remote rural areas from abusive landlords, politicians and soldiers, the NPA has gone the way of the mafia, extorting money from big corporations which have business interests in the countryside.
Firms that don’t pay up find their factories, sites and equipment put to the torch by the NPA rebels.
Most companies pay “revolutionary taxes” to the NPA because government troops are not always around to protect their facilities.
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The Sandiganbayan has found sufficient basis to proceed with the trial of former Vice President Jojo Binay and his son, dismissed Makati Mayor Junjun, for allegedly making big money from the construction of the Makati City Hall building.
What has taken the anti-graft court so long to decide?
Lesser officials would have been tried outright and convicted of graft.
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The Bangladesh government will send a team of officials to the Philippines to push for the recovery of more than $81 million stolen from its accounts at the New York Federal Reserve last year and routed to a bank in Manila.
Part of the loot — about P780 million — has been recovered from Kim Wong, a junket operator, who returned all the amount paid to him by some clients after he learned that it was stolen.
The Bangladesh government has yet to officially thank Wong for his act of honesty.
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The Catholic Church in the country has warned about the distribution of “Satanic rosaries” that are supposedly cursed and could do harm to their owners.
Satan or the devil is an invention by the early Christian church that has been handed down to this day so that all Christian religions—Catholics and Protestants alike—believe in its existence.
One Christian denomination even preaches that an ocean of fire awaits nonmembers.