News Roundup 19 December 2022
Dec 19, 2022 • 5 min Read
BuCor exec tagged in Percy Lapid slay breaks silence, denies involvement | PHILSTAR.COM – Former Bureau of Corrections official Ricardo Zulueta, who has not been heard from for months and has been declared to be absent without leave, has finally surfaced and broke his silence to deny involvement in the killing of broadcaster Percy Lapid. “The allegations are all baseless. And this is the handiwork of drug lords who are so angry at him and [Director] General [Gerald] Bantag because they removed the undeserved privileges from the time they took over at BuCor,” Zulueta’s lawyer, Lauro Gacayan, told CNN Philippines’ “The Source” on Monday. Gacayan added that the evidence against Zulueta is “hearsay” and “inadmissible in court.” Gacayan said Zulueta — who, along with suspended BuCor Director General Gerald Bantag, is tagged as one of the masterminds behind Lapid’s ambush — appeared at his law office in Baguio City last Tuesday noon. “He appeared before me and engaged my services. He said he wants to show the whole world that he’s not abroad, he’s not in hiding, he’s not dead,” Gacayan said as he noted that his client has been to Manila, Baguio and Pangasinan. He said Zulueta has not been seen in public places because he has not received a formal copy of the complaint against him and because of threats to his life. The lawyer added that Zulueta only received a one-page subpoena from the Department of Justice summoning him to the preliminary investigation hearing into the complaint filed over Lapid slay and only obtained a copy of the complaint from Bantag’s lawyer. “There is no reason for him to appear if he was not provided a copy of the affidavit complaint for him to answer,” Gacayan said. He added that he and Zulueta support Bantag’s motion for the DOJ to inhibit from the case and for it to be referred to the Office of the Ombudsman. “We believe we are entitled to the cold neutrality of an impartial tribunal,” Gacayan said. “With the pronouncements of the secretary of the DOJ like, ‘You should surrender. You have to face the case in court.’ That is a very clear case of prejudgment and we do not believe we will be able to obtain a fair proceedings before the panel of prosecutors appointed by the DOJ secretary.”
Delayed or not, will higher PH income status mean better Filipino lives? | INQUIRER.NET – Since 2019, the year the Philippines was classified by the World Bank as a lower-middle income economy, the government has vowed that the country will “soon” reach upper-middle income status. But what does such a status really mean? The most recent promise was made by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. when he addressed Filipinos last July, saying that his administration will bring the Philippines to a higher income status by 2024. Looking back, Ernesto Pernia, who was head of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) in 2019, said the Philippines will advance to an upper-middle income status by 2020. Then in July last year, NEDA, which was already headed by its new chief, Karl Kendrick Chua, said the country, through its key economic policies, will achieve higher income status by 2022. But like what happened to Pernia and Chua’s words, the new administration’s deadline of reaching an upper-middle income status for the Philippines by 2024 was moved to 2025 because of the sharp economic contraction in 2020 and the sharp depreciation of the peso this year. It was Marcos himself who stressed in his first State of the Nation Address that the Philippines will have a gross national income (GNI) per capita of $4,256 by 2024, indicating that the country will be able to achieve higher income status. Then in his speech at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 21, Marcos said “despite the challenges of the pandemic and the global economic upheavals, we remain on track to reach upper middle-income status by next year.” But last Dec. 17, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan revealed that the Philippines moved its target of reaching a higher income status from 2024 to 2025. This, as the country ran into setbacks this year, he said, stressing how the sharp economic contraction in 2020 and sharp depreciation of the peso, which sank to an all-time low of P59:$1 in October, affected the GNI. Balisacan stated at the “Saturday News Forum” in Quezon City that the entry of the Philippines in the category of upper-middle income economies “will now be in 2025.” However, he expressed confidence that the country’s GNI per capita will hit $4,456 by 2025 “because at that level of per capita income, that’s when we meet the threshold of joining upper-middle [income] economies.” Based on data from World Bank, countries are assigned up to four income classes—low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high-income—depending on the GNI per capita of the previous year. “Countries are immediately reassigned on July 1 each year, based on the estimate of their GNI per capita for the previous calendar year. Income groupings remain fixed for the entire fiscal year,” it said.
Japan to donate Huey helicopters to PH Army | INQUIRER.NET – Japan will donate UH-1J Huey multirole helicopters to the Philippine Army as part of a grant, a top military official said, to boost the Philippines’ limited capabilities and a sign of growing defense ties between both countries. “Japan Ground Self-Defense Force will give a grant of UH-1J helicopters to the Philippine Army in the coming years,” Army chief Lt. Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. told the Inquirer. The UH-1J Huey is the improved Japanese variant of the Bell UH-1 helicopters operated by the Philippine Air Force. Its improvements include a vibration-reduction system, night vision goggle-compatible cockpit and infrared countermeasures.
