News Roundup 09 December 2022
Dec 09, 2022 • 6 min Read
Lawmakers eyeing more changes in Maharlika plan | INQUIRER.NET – Admitting that the proposed creation of the Maharlika Wealth Fund “got off on the wrong foot,” Rep. Stella Quimbo on Thursday said lawmakers were considering other revisions to address concerns about the plan. Quimbo, senior vice chair of the House appropriations panel, announced on Wednesday the removal of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and the Social Security System (SSS) from the list of funders of Maharlika with an originally planned contribution totaling P175 billion. The Marikina lawmaker said the House panel was considering to also remove the P25 billion that the national government would be putting in as seed fund as proposed under House Bill No. 6398, or the Maharlika Investments Fund Act, filed last week by Speaker Martin Romualdez, President Marcos’ son and Ilocos Norte Rep. Ferdinand Alexander “Sandro” Marcos, and other administration allies including Quimbo. “We also recommended to remove (from the bill) the P25 billion from the national government. Because, again, it’s probably not the right time,” she said in an interview on ABS-CBN News Channel, adding that the proposal would be heard today (Friday) at the House committee on appropriations. She added that the designation of the President as chair of the governing board of the sovereign wealth fund was not yet cast in stone. “Right now, to be honest with you, that’s still something that’s evolving,” she pointed out, explaining that different models of the sovereign wealth fund worldwide tapped government economic managers to chair the governing board. “So that’s why at this point we’re trying to sort of weigh where the chips will fall. So that’s a little bit more dynamic at this point. It’s not yet cast in stone. So even among economic managers, it’s being discussed,” she said. Addressing the various complaints from economists, civil society, the academe, and even some lawmakers, Quimbo said the proponents of HB 6398 “assumed there was proper or sufficient consultation with the stakeholders” since it was prepared by the country’s economic managers. “But then, lo and behold, when we started to hear the bill and we started to have a series of consultations, we realized that consultation was lacking. Obviously at this point and time, it’s not ripe for us to include GSIS and SSS as a fund contributor,” she said. During Wednesday’s meeting of the House leadership with the economic managers, Quimbo said it was agreed that dividends from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas would be used instead to add to the seed fund from Land Bank of the Philippines and Development Bank of the Philippines. She noted that BSP Governor Felipe Medalla’s commitment to provide the monetary agency’s income to the Maharlika fund was “an indicator of support.” “For now, we can start smaller than planned… others could join when they’re ready,” referring to the GSIS, SSS and the private sector. Still, ACT Teachers party list Rep. France Castro maintained in a press briefing on Thursday that “deodorizing” HB 6398 was not enough and urged instead for the bill to just be scrapped. Castro, who is House deputy minority leader, said that “no matter how much the provisions of the Maharlika bill are deodorized or changed, the fact remains that the bill is rotten and needs to be set aside and junked.” “The truth remains that we have no surplus. We have no real wealth if we look at our records,” she argued. “We are running on a deficit budget. Actually the (Bureau of Treasury) said that our current debt is at P13.52 trillion. What’s the opposite of surplus, isn’t it debt? So we really have no surplus. We have a huge debt,” she pointed out.
NBI probes ‘bogus’ death certificates of drug war, EJK victims | INQUIRER.NET – Drug-related killings being passed off as deaths by natural causes in official records “cannot be tolerated,” Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said on Wednesday. Speaking with reporters, Remulla said the National Bureau of Investigation had started looking into the “bogus death certificates” of some individuals who were killed in the Duterte administration’s antidrug campaign but were falsely recorded as having died of disease. Remulla made the remark in response to a landmark court decision granting a man’s petition to correct his 9-year-old son’s death certificate to show he died of a gunshot wound and not pneumonia in 2016. “The NBI is now studying the documents it has received, including the findings,” he said, adding: “We will pursue those who have violated the law. This cannot be tolerated.” In a Nov. 15 decision, the Court of Appeals granted Rodrigo Baylon’s petition to correct the death certificate of his son Lenin, closing one chapter in his yearslong quest for justice. On Dec. 2, 2016, Lenin was hit by stray bullets in Caloocan City during a drug-related shooting that also killed two women, according to a police report. But his death certificate later stated bronchopneumonia as the cause of his death, prompting the boy’s father to take legal action. In 2019, a lower court rejected Baylon’s request to have the certificate corrected, forcing him to appeal. In November, the appellate court sided with him and ordered the local civil registry to change the cause of death to “gunshot wound.” On Tuesday, hoping to build on Baylon’s legal victory, the legal assistance group Ideals called on the government to address such fraud being committed in the records of extrajudicial killings (EJK). Remulla acknowledged that Baylon’s case was among many possible cases of “falsification” now under investigation. “We have nine cases that we are investigating on wrongful death, or inconsistent with death certificates with the actual cause of death after exhumation done by some of our friends from the forensic pathology field upon the request of the families of the victims,” he said. “The death certificates showed that the cause of death was natural cause, but the autopsies conducted showed that they have gunshot wounds,” Remulla said. Fr. Flavie Villanueva, of the Church-led Paghilom program that offers psychosocial support to families and survivors of EJK victims, earlier said Ideals had uncovered many similar cases. Last year, Villanueva’s group started exhuming and performing a second autopsy on the bodies of drug war victims after the five-year lease on their “apartment” tombs had lapsed. Of the 72 bodies that had been exhumed, at least five had death certificates saying heart attack, sepsis or other illnesses as cause of death, the priest said. The erroneous records are believed to have disguised the actual number of deaths in the war on drugs, which started under the previous administration. Baylon’s case has been added to the documents sent to the International Criminal Court, which is investigating allegations of crimes against humanity in the conduct of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war.
Almost 40% of Filipinos ‘dissatisfied’ with performance of migrant worker dept — survey | PHILSTAR.COM – Nearly a fourth of Filipinos are unsatisfied with the performance of the new Department of Migrant Workers half a year into the Marcos administration, new survey results published by a think tank Friday suggest. Per the OCTA Research group’s Tugon ng Masa survey for the fourth quarter of 2022, 36% of interviewees said they were dissatisfied with the department’s work. Only 10% said they were satisfied with it. It was followed by the Department of Trade and Industry at 16% dissatisfaction and the Department of Energy at 15%. Both the Department of Budget and Management and the Department of Transportation received 12% dissatisfaction. No other national government agency breached the ten percent mark.
