News Roundup 03 April 2022
Apr 03, 2022 • 5 min Read
Robredo supporters launch house-to-house campaigning | PHILSTAR.COM – Thousands of presidential aspirant Vice President Leni Robredo’s supporters, including celebrities, launched yesterday the “Tao sa Tao” or house-to-house campaign initiative, which aims to convince more Filipinos to vote for her in the May 9 elections. Actress and singer Agot Isidro, one of the first celebrities to endorse the tandem of Robredo and vice-presidential candidate Sen. Francis Pangilinan, said house-to-house campaigning is their way of reaching out to more individuals and allowing them to learn more about Robredo and her platforms. “It’s reaching out to those voters who are not in the rallies. It’s really reaching out to the people on the ground who I think are most affected by the outcome of the coming elections,” said Isidro, who joined Robredo volunteers in Bohol last Friday. An initiative by volunteers and supporters of Robredo and Pangilinan, Tao sa Tao aims to reach out to more people outside the spheres of “solid supporters,” according to a statement by the Leni People’s Campaign. Isidro said the initiative “enables supporters to have conversations with people, learn more about their personal experiences and share with them what the Vice President has to offer if she becomes president.” Apart from Isidro, actress Angel Locsin and husband Neil Arce also visited residents of Marawi City and Cagayan de Oro over the weekend to ask for support for Robredo. Meanwhile, actress Marjorie Barretto joined Robredo’s daughter Aika during a house-to-house campaign in Quezon City yesterday. Aika said house-to-house campaigning is not new to her family. “This is the kind of campaigning that we have all been used to,” she said, noting that they used the same strategy when her father, the late former interior secretary Jesse Robredo, ran for mayor of Naga City and when her mother ran for the House of Representatives. Aika added that talking to people personally is the best way to combat fake news and disinformation. Supporters and volunteers of Robredo also held yesterday house-to-house campaigns in Isabela, Ilocos Sur, Pampanga, Dinagat, Surigao del Norte, Surigao City, Cebu, Quirino, Butuan City, Nueva Vizcaya, North Cotabato, Zamboanga del Norte, Capiz, Calbayog, Davao City, Davao del Sur and South Cotabato.
Quiboloy co-accused to help pin him down | INQUIRER.NET – A co-accused of Apollo Quiboloy, President Rodrigo Duterte’s close friend and spiritual adviser, has agreed to cooperate with US federal authorities in prosecuting him in his sex trafficking case in the United States, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). Maria de Leon, 73, admitted to federal prosecutors that she had been processing fraudulent documents for members of Quiboloy’s religious sect called “Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC), The Name Above Every Name,” the US Attorney’s Office of the DOJ for the Central District of California said in a statement on April 1. The fake immigration papers allowed the entry into the United States of young women who were allegedly duped into soliciting donations for Quiboloy’s “bogus” foundation and were forced to have sex with him, the DOJ said. It said that De Leon, a Los Angeles-based paralegal, admitted participation in violating US immigration laws in a plea bargain agreement, which was filed in a US district court on Friday (Saturday in Manila). It said De Leon, a resident of Koreatown in Los Angeles and the owner of Liberty Legal Document Services, confessed that she had supplied spurious travel documents for KOJC members for about eight years in connivance with the leaders of the Quiboloy-founded sect. The fraudulent immigration documents were supposedly used for the fake marriages and visas of the KOJC members to make their stay in the United States valid. “In addition to pleading guilty, De Leon agreed to cooperate in the government’s case,” the DOJ said without giving details of what she may do to help build or strengthen the case against Quiboloy and others. The US justice department said the federal court would soon set a hearing for De Leon to formally discuss her guilty plea.
Pimentel files reso seeking Senate probe into BIR’s failure to collect P203-B tax liability of Marcos family | Manila Bulletin – Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III has filed a resolution calling for a Senate inquiry into the apparent failure of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to collect the estate tax obligation due on the estate of the family of former president Ferdinand Marcos. In filing Senate Resolution No. 998 last March 28, 2022, Pimentel said it is imperative to hold the former and incumbent BIR officials accountable for their failure to collect the debt owed by the Marcos’ family to the government. Pimentel said the amount that can be collected from the Marcos family can greatly help the government offset the effects of the ongoing battle against the Covid-19 pandemic and the effect of the war between Russia and Ukraine. “The Filipino people are presently suffering from the effects of the recession due to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the ongoing effects of the Russian-Ukraine war which have led to gargantuan fuel price increases almost overnight, and in turn, to great increases in the prices of basic commodities, transportation and services,” Pimentel said in the resolution. “There is no clear funding source for these proposed subsidies and it is immediately obvious that the governmetn would be hard-pressed to source the much-needed funds in order to support these social alleviation measures,” he pointed out. Therefore, Pimentel said, it is an “urgent and pressing need for the Senate to look into the reasons and BIR officials, past and present, who are responsible for the government, after almost 25 years, has failed to collect on these amounts which have already been adjudged with finality to be due and demandable against the heirs of Ferdinand Marcos.
