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Southeast Asia

Not likely Sulu sultan acted alone

2013-03-15

It has now come to light that in the lead up to the Sabah "invasion", Jamalul Kiram III had been entertaining a string of rather interesting Filipino personalities at his home in a Manila suburb. There was, of course, Nur Misuari, the discredited former governor of Muslim Mindanao. And then there was Norberto Gonzales, national security adviser under former president Gloria Arroyo. Another colourful figure consorting with the sultan was Pastor "Boy" Saycon, a "political strategist" linked to Jose Cojuangco who had been a thorn at the side of his sister, the late president Corazon Aquino, and now of his nephew, President Benigno Aquino. Aquino has since launched an official investigation into a possible conspiracy linking at least some of these personalities to the Sabah misadventure.

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Southeast Asia

Philippine clan leader pleads not guilty to massacre

2012-12-13

A Philippine politician charged with helping plan the country's worst political massacre pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to organising the murder of at least 57 victims. Zaldy Ampatuan, allegedly one of the main plotters of the 2009 attack in the country's south, entered a plea after the court struck down months of maneuvers challenging the legality of his arrest. The Ampatuan clan allegedly carried out the massacre in November 2009 to keep a rival candidate from challenging one of their members in upcoming local elections. At the time Zaldy Ampatuan was governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, a self-rule area where then-president Gloria Arroyo armed hundreds of the clan's supporters to help the military fight Islamic terrorists guerrillas. The family patriarch and his son are also among 75 suspects on trial. The two are accused of plotting the murders along with Zaldy Ampatuan and other clan members. Andal Ampatuan Jr. allegedly led a group of about 100 gunmen in stopping a convoy of cars carrying relatives of the rival candidate, their lawyers and journalists, and then gunning them down in a remote area. The massacre, in which the victims were buried in mass graves using an excavator owned by the provincial government, shocked the nation. Philippine police said 103 people have been arrested over the massacre. However more than 90 other suspects remain at large, raising fears the clan may still be able to intimidate potential witnesses.

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Southeast Asia

Philippine massacre trial: Potential witness killed

2012-06-30

[Saudi Gazette] A member of a clan that is accused in the Philippines' worst political massacre was murdered as prosecutors urged him to testify against his relatives, police said Thursday. Alijol Ampatuan was rubbed out in February as state prosecutors tried to put him on the stand, local police chief Marcelo Pintac said, adding that it was the sixth murder of somebody connected to the case. "He (was) not a witness yet. I was told that they (prosecutors) were speaking to him about turning state witness," Superintendent Pintac told AFP by telephone. He said the dead man was a distant relative of powerful political leader Andal Ampatuan Sr., one of 64 people standing trial in Manila over the massacre, and had worked as a security guard for the clan. The Ampatuans are accused of massacring 57 people in the southern province of Maguindanao in Nov. 2009, allegedly to prevent a political rival from challenging a clan member in 2010 elections for provincial governor. The family had ruled Maguindanao for a decade, armed by the previous government of then-president Gloria Arroyo, who used the clan's private army as a buffer against Mohammedan guerrillas. Meanwhile, ...back at the Esquimeau village our hero was receiving a quick lesson in aeronautics...... ...back at the pool hall, Peoria Slim had found another sucker... a Philippine provincial governor says his political rival tried to kill him and his brother months before a 2009 election-related massacre. Esmael Mangudadatu, governor of southern Maguindanao province, testified at the trial Thursday that the main suspect in the 2009 killings had sent hundreds of government soldiers, police and civilian militia to attack his brother's residence on the pretext that a rebel was hiding there. Mangudadatu said he prevented the attack at his brother's residence by persuading gunnies to withdraw. The massacre victims included the Ampatuan rival's relatives as well as 32 journalists and media workers, whose bodies were all found shot to death and buried in a shallow pit. Pintac said the true identity of the latest murder victim took months to emerge because local police had initially identified Alijol Ampatuan's corpse as that of another person. Prosecutors this month said the body of another man who has already testified against the Ampatuans, clan driver Esmael Amil Enog, was found "chain-sawed to pieces" and stuffed in a sack. A third witness, a member of the clan's private army, was killed in 2010, while three relatives of other witnesses have also been murdered in separate incidents. Carlos Conde, Philippine researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... , called on the government to boost its witness protection program to enable the state to send the massacre suspects to jail. "This is meant to silence the witnesses and terrify those still thinking of testifying," he said. --

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Southeast Asia

Philippines' Arroyo pleads not guilty to vote fraud

2012-02-23

MANILA -- A smiling ex-Philippine president Gloria Arroyo pleaded not guilty Thursday in her first court appearance since being charged with rigging an election, an offence that could see her jailed for life. Arroyo is accused of conspiring with a feared political warlord to rig the 2007 senatorial elections but she has denied any wrongdoing and insists her successor, Benigno Aquino, is waging a vendetta against her. Just another place in the world where the elites steal everything that isn't nailed down. If it is nailed down, they first fetch a pry bar... "Not guilty," Arroyo, 64, told the judge after standing up in a Manila courthouse wearing a neck brace to support her spine that she says is weakened from a rare disease. The Filipino version of 'feditis'... Arroyo had smiled and waved to a crowd of journalists after she arrived at the court from a military hospital where she had been detained for nearly three months while awaiting trial. She smiled again after leaving the brief arraignment hearing and heading back to the hospital in a police convoy, but did not talk to reporters. No trial date was set. Just like Hosni, she was full of vim and vigor until overthrown, and now she needs a hospital. The vote-rigging case is the first of many charges Aquino has promised to file against his predecessor, whom he has accused of many corrupt acts while she was in power from 2001 to 2010. Prosecutors allege Arroyo ordered that ballots in 2007 elections be switched in the southern province of Maguindanao so that one of her allies won the final position available in the nation's senate. Arroyo is alleged to have conspired with then-Maguindanao governor and close political ally Andal Ampatuan Snr to tamper with the ballots. Ampatuan Snr, who had a reputation as a ruthless political warlord, is a co-defendant in the vote-rigging case. He is also facing multiple murder charges for allegedly organising with his relatives the massacre in 2009 of 57 people in Maguindanao to stop a rival's election challenge, an event that forced Arroyo to end their alliance. Three weeks after Arroyo's arrest, Aquino's allies in the lower house of parliament impeached Supreme Court chief justice Renato Corona on charges of corruption and protecting the ex-president. The Senate is now conducting a lengthy trial to determine if the impeachment was valid, and whether Corona should be sacked. In a speech on Tuesday, Aquino warned his anti-corruption efforts hinged on successful prosecutions of Arroyo and Corona. "If certain elements are still able to prevent Gloria Arroyo, for example, from being held accountable, then it makes a mockery of our anti-corruption efforts," he said. "We want to send a stern yet simple message: justice evades no one. There are no exceptions in our campaign against corruption."

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Southeast Asia

Ex-Philippines leader seized over poll rigging

2011-11-19

[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Philippines police set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock ex-president Gloria Arroyo at her hospital bed on Friday on charges of conspiring with a feared warlord to rig an election, an offence that could lead to life in jail. The events capped a tumultuous week in Philippine politics that had seen the government block Arroyo, 64, from leaving the country after she arrived at Manila Airport wearing a neck brace and saying she needed medical care abroad. The decision by the Commission on Elections to charge her today with rigging the 2007 senatorial elections also marked the high-point in President Benigno Aquino's campaign to hold his predecessor to account for alleged graft. "Mrs Arroyo is compelled to stay in the country and face the charges of electoral sabotage," Justice secretary Leila de Lima told news hounds after a Manila court issued an arrest warrant against the ex-president. "(This case) has great implications not just to the integrity of our electoral system, but also to the very principles of democracy. "It is our desire ... that the Filipino people are finally given the justice they duly deserve." Police then served the arrest warrant on Arroyo today night at a Manila hospital where her aides said she was being treated for a rare bone disease that had led to three unsuccessful spine operations this year.

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Southeast Asia

Bodies found in Philippine massacre province

2011-05-11

[Straits Times] PHILIPPINE police have dug up two bodies while investigating other alleged murders by members of a powerful clan being tried for the country's worst political massacre, the justice secretary said on Tuesday. Good lord, they're digging up bodies all over the world this week. Mexico, Uganda, now the Philippines... what's going on? Leila de Lima said the bodies might be those of missing supporters of a rival politician, who vanished in 2003 in Maguindanao, a poor southern province that the clan controlled for a decade. 'One of the skeletal remains was placed inside a sack and the body was apparently chopped, while the other one was outside the sack,' Ms de Lima told news hounds. Clan patriarch Andal Ampatuan Snr, his son and namesake, and four other relatives have been tossed in the calaboose and charged with murder over the November 23 2009 massacre of 57 people, 32 of whom were journalists. An informant led police to a secret gravesite where the two bodies were found on a Maguindanao hillock last weekend, Ms de Lima said. The Ampatuans ruled Maguindanao province for a decade under the patronage of former president Gloria Arroyo, who rights monitors said allowed the clan to run a large private army as a proxy force against Mohammedan rebels.

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Southeast Asia

Philippine MPs set to impeach anti-corruption chief

2011-03-09

[Straits Times] PHILIPPINE politicians on Tuesday launched impeachment proceedings against the country's top graft prosecutor over allegations she stood aside as ex-leader Gloria Arroyo stole public funds. The House of Representatives justice committee voted to recommend that parliament begin a formal proceeding to remove Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez from her post, its chairman Neil Tupas said. 'The committee of justice finds the existence of probable cause to impeach Ms Merceditas Gutierrez for betrayal of public trust,' Mr Tupas said at the end of the public hearing, which aired live on national television. The House, the lower house of parliament, is expected to vote next week on the committee's recommendation, Mr Tupas said. Ninety-four votes in the 282-member chamber would send the impeachment complaint to the Senate, the upper chamber, whose 24 members would sit as judges. Ms Gutierrez, who was once justice minister in Arroyo's cabinet, had been accused by Mrs Arroyo's foes of failing to pursue officials suspected of large-scale corruption during her boss's nine-year rule.

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Southeast Asia

Philippines starts graft probe into ex-president

2010-07-31

[The Nation (Nairobi)] Philippine President Benigno Aquino on Friday launched a "Truth Commission" with broad powers to investigate alleged corruption and vote fraud by his predecessor, Gloria Arroyo. "The process of bringing a necessary closure to the allegations of official wrongdoing and impunity has begun," Aquino said in a statement announcing he had signed an executive order to form the commission. "It is tasked with investigating and establishing the truth regarding the serious allegations of wrongdoing in the past nine years supposedly involving government officials and their accomplices in the private sector." The body will look into allegations Arroyo cheated her way to victory in the 2004 presidential election, as well as large-scale corruption cases, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima told reporters. Among the graft issues to be probed are allegations Arroyo's family and government officials acted improperly in negotiating a 329-million-dollar Internet broadband deal with a Chinese firm, de Lima added. She said that if Arroyo and others refused to co-operate with the commission, they could be prosecuted for perjury or obstructing justice. "They can testify or not at their own risk," de Lima said when asked whether Arroyo would have to report to the commission.

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Southeast Asia

Aquino set to deliver blistering anti-corruption speech

2010-07-25

Plans to detail disappearance, misuse of anti-terror funds by his predecessor Gloria Arroyo Phillipine politicos blame predecessors for corruption? That's sorta like American politicos vowing to clean up the waste of the previous administration ... Give him time - he's only been in office a couple weeks.

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Southeast Asia

Aquino sworn in

2010-07-01

[Straits Times] BENIGNO Aquino was on Wednesday sworn in as president of the Philippines amid joyous celebrations and desperate hopes he will usher in a new era of clean government for the corruption-wrecked nation. Police said up to 500,000 people, many of them wearing the Aquino family's signature yellow, turned up for the festival-style inauguration ceremony at a seaside park in Manila. The crowd roared and waved yellow flags as the 50-year-old bachelor Aquino, wearing a traditional Filipino 'barong' shirt, took his oath in front of a Supreme Court judge. 'I think he can reduce corruption and improve governance,' high school teacher Terlito Malaya, 52, said as he waited for Mr Aquino to be sworn in. 'Poverty is also a very big problem and needs a permanent solution... but no-one should think right now that he will fail.' Mr Aquino rode to the country's biggest election victory on May 10 on a pledge to fight woeful graft and poverty that he said thrived during the nearly 10-year reign of outgoing president Gloria Arroyo. Another crucial factor was his status as the son of Philippine democracy heroes Benigno and Corazon Aquino, who remain revered for their efforts to overthrow dictator Ferdinand Marcos. His mother, Corazon, earned a reputation as an incorruptible leader during her six-year term as president following the 'people power' revolution that toppled Marcos in 1986. Her death from cancer last year reignited national support for the family, which in turn lifted her son from political lightweight after 11 years as a low-profile member of parliament to presidential frontrunner. East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk were among the foreign dignitaries to attend the inauguration.

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Southeast Asia

Witness in Philippine massacre trial killed

2010-06-24

A key witness in the trial of a powerful Muslim clan accused of orchestrating the worst political massacre in the Philippines has been shot dead, a prosecutor said Thursday. The witness, Suwaib Upham, claimed to have taken part in the November killings of 57 people in a crime allegedly planned by his former employers, the Ampatuan clan. "He was supposed to be one of our strongest witnesses," prosecutor Harry Roque told AFP. "He saw, and participated in, the killings and could have directly named in court those involved." Roque warned that Upham's killing, which he was told occurred last week in the southern province of Maguindanao, could potentially weaken the case against the Ampatuan family. Roque said Upham had been talking to prosecutors in Manila since February, but went back to Maguindanao after the justice department did not act quickly on his request for protection. "He went back to Maguindanao when it became apparent the witness protection programme would take a while to take him in," Roque said. His death comes two months after an uncle of another witness was also shot and killed, in what authorities said was part of a plan to intimidate those speaking out against the Ampatuan clan. The clan, which has ruled Maguindanao with brutal efficiency for a decade, enjoyed political ties with outgoing President Gloria Arroyo, who used the family's huge private army as a force against separatist rebels. Six clan members are among 196 people charged over the murders, allegedly carried out to prevent a member of a rival clan from running as governor of the province. The main suspect, Andal Ampatuan Jnr, allegedly led about 100 armed militiamen who stopped the convoy of supporters of Esmael Mangudadatu and then summarily executed 57 people, including 30 journalists. The closely watched trial has been mired in controversy, and has been suspended since April. Justice Secretary Alberto Agra in April controversially dropped charges against two Ampatuan suspects, but was forced to reverse his decision after public outrage. The justice department then courted more criticism when it allowed the main suspect, Ampatuan Jnr, to hold a free-wheeling press conference inside his prison cell without handcuffs. Roque said the court has not yet given prosecutors a definite timeline for the resumption of the trial. "But justice needs to be served quickly in this case," he said. Roque said Upham's relatives had informed him that the witness had been killed by gunmen last week in Maguindanao. It was not clear why police did not immediately report his killing to prosecutors, and no officials were immediately available for comment.

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Southeast Asia

5 communist rebels slain

2010-06-19

[Straits Times] FIVE communist guerrillas were killed and six policemen were wounded in an extended gunbattle in the southern Philippines on Friday, a police spokesman said. About 50 fighters from the New People's Army (NPA) attempted to overrun a small police outpost in the restive island of Mindanao but the police were able to drive them off, said Superintendent Querubin Manalang. Police reinforcements arrived to pursue the fleeing rebels, causing the fighting to spread in the isolated town of Cateel, he said. At least five dead insurgents were seen being dragged away by their comrades while six wounded policemen had to be airlifted to hospital, said Mr Manalang. Fighting with the NPA has stepped up ahead of a deadline imposed by outgoing President Gloria Arroyo for government forces to crush the rebellion by the time she steps down on June 30. At least 15 government soldiers were killed in intensified NPA attacks last month after the May 10 national elections.

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