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Five Pinoy pickpockets locked up for 2 yrs

Posted on 19 May 2019 No comments

By Vir B. Lumicao

A District Court judge said the 5 had conspired
in trying to pick the wallet of a Korean woman

Five Filipino tourists convicted of trying to steal the purse of a Korean woman inside the Central MTR station over a year ago, were each sentenced to two years in jail on May 14.

But District Court Judge David Dufton said the convicts – Zenaida Aviles, Rasim Linambos, Arlene Gerodias, Manuelito Camacho and Delia Tagalo – may serve just a few months, as they had already been detained for 13 months. Their sentences could be cut further for good behavior in jail.

Aviles, Linambos, Gerodias, Camacho and Tagalo were found guilty after trial by Judge Dufton of conspiring to steal the purse of Korean tourist Ko Yuri on Apr 24 last year.

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According to the prosecution, the five knew each other and tried to carry out the theft together. An undercover police officer who saw them going up and down the Wanchai MTR station escalators tailed them and alerted nine other officers.

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On arrival in Central, the officer saw the five sandwich a Korean couple down the escalator to the Tsuen Wan-bound trains. Aviles then unzipped the woman’s backpack and pulled out her wallet, but released it when she found it chained to the bag.

That was when the officer called in his colleagues, but the defendants scattered and boarded the departing train. They were arrested when they tried to get off in Admiralty.

Dufton rejected the defendants’ claim that they were not acting together to steal, and that none of them had tried to steal the wallet from Ko’s backpack.

He brushed aside their claim that from their guesthouse in Jordan they had set out to go to World-Wide Plaza in Central to eat Filipino food but lost their way on the MTR, and ended up in Wanchai. From there they took the tram to Central.

Dufton said that in coming up with his verdict he carefully considered all the evidence, including the oral and written submissions of prosecutor Bina Sujanani and defense lawyers Andrew Raffell, John Marray, James Sherry, Paul Stephenson and Maurice Peter Tracy.

Dufton said he had considered the defendants’ mitigations, including Aviles having three little children and coming here to buy clothes for resale back home; Linambos having gone to Macau to visit his girlfriend and coming to Hong Kong to look for a placement agency that offered a job in Canada, and Gerodias coming here to buy Disney clothes that she could resell in the Philippines.

Dufton said he used similar cases of pickpocketing that involved conspiracy and international element to come up with a 24-month sentence for each of the five.

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Road-HK holds driving seminar for FDHs anew

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Members of the Radiant Organization of Amiable Drivers and participants of its “Learn To Drive” seminar pose for a souvenir shot with their teacher, driving instructor Zackery Wong.

A group of mostly female drivers in Hong Kong has held another successful information seminar on driving in Hong Kong, with some of its pioneer members as inspirational speakers.

The Radiant Organization of Amiable Drivers held its “Learn To Drive” seminar on Apr 7 at the Consulate’s conference room, with Deputy Consul General Germinia Usudan as guest speaker.

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The speakers also included founding members Mercy Permales, Jennifer Tadeo and Rosevine Duma, who all encouraged participants to pursue driving in Hong Kong as an additional skill or a step up from doing purely domestic work; and Catalina Magno of Enrich Hong Kong.

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The main speaker, private driving instructor Zackery Wong, shared tips on driving and how to obtain a driver’s license in Hong Kong.

In her speech. DCG Usudan exhorted the would-be drivers to follow their own dreams, and not just focus on making the lives of their family members comfortable.

“Madami na kayong pangarap na tinupad, lahat ng mga pamilya ay natulungan na ninyo, mga magulang, kapatid, anak, pinsan… but I think it’s about time to achieve your own dreams,” she said. “Kayo naman. Hindi po siguro pagmamalabis na isipin naman ninyo ang inyong mga sarili, hindi pagdadamot na kayo naman ang mag shine. “

ROAD-HK, which was founded in 2012, holds driving information seminars once or twice each year, under the leadership of its current president, Ma. Theresa Aquino and vice president (and former president) Maria Weenna Advincula.

The organization consists of Filipinos with a Hong Kong driving license, as well as driving aspirants. It aims to encourage other Filipino domestic workers to upgrade their skills, particularly driving, and get better pay.

FDWs with driving duties are mostly paid upwards of $10,000 per month, which is twice as much as the minimum salary for those doing mostly domestic work.

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How delayed budget hurt economy

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When the government reported that economic growth slowed down to 5.6 percent during the first quarter, the lowest in four years, President Rodrigo Duterte blamed bickering in Congress which delayed the budget, which in turn led led to underspending by up to P75 billion.

“So our GDP will really decrease…. If there are no transactions, money will not circulate. The projects of the congressmen were delayed because I vetoed the budget,” he said.

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The president signed the P3.7 trillion budget for 2019 in mid-April, but vetoed P95 billion in appropriations, including pork barrel inserted by congressmen and disputed by senators.

His economic advisers concurred.

“As we have forewarned repeatedly, the reenacted (2018) budget would sharply slow the pace of economic growth,” said Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia, who heads the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

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He added that had this year’s budget been implemented on time, the economy should have grown by up to 6.6 percent during the quarter.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, for his part, said the government underspent over P1 billion on public goods and services daily when it operated under a reenacted budget.

Pernia is optimistic the economy will recover its pace. “To reach the full-year growth target of 6-7 percent, the economy will need to expand by an average of 6.1 percent over the next three quarters. This is still achievable given the current performance of the private sector and if the government sector is able to jumpstart and speed up the implementation of its new programs and projects,” he explained

But economists monitoring the Philippines for two groups of economic consultants — Oxford Economics and Capital Economics – are looking also at factors that paint a more pessimistic picture.

The UK-based Oxford Economics forecast a GDP growth below 6 percent for the whole year despite a surger in government spending, because of influences from abroad, such as the US-China trade dispute.

“While we expect the recent flare up in US-China trade tensions to subside, the probability of renewed escalation between the two countries has risen substantially,” it said in a report by Thatchinamoorthy Krshnan.

For its part, Capital Economics also warned against the effect of the US-China trade tension, plus “a tough external environment and the lagged effects of monetary tightening mean growth is likely to struggle to beat 6 percent this year.”

Its report, by Capital Economics Asia economist Alex Holmes, noted that “investment growth also slowed and both import and export growth dropped back sharply.”

Among other things, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) policy-making Monetary Board has since cut the policy rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 4.5 percent.

This is a reversal of the BSP policies which raised key interest rates by a total of 175 bps last year to control the increase in prices of basic commodities—a 10-year high of 5.2 percent—caused by new or higher excise taxes imposed by the government under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Act, skyrocketing global oil prices, and domestic food supply bottlenecks, especially of rice, according to a report by the Philippine Daiky Inquirer.

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Some poll cheats thwarted

Posted on 18 May 2019 No comments

How do you win elections, especially when the count is computerized and hard to tamper with?
For those who want cheat to victory, there are two popular ways during the last elections: eliminate the opponent (or their supporters), or buy votes. Unfortunately for them, both of these are criminal offenses and in this election, law enforcers have arrested a number of people.

A report by the Philippine National Police (PNP) indicated that as of the weekend before the May 13 elections, 20 deaths had been recorded under cases of election-related violence.

In addition, the PNP also reported 43 cases of election-related violence, in which 25 involved shooting. PNP also reported 24 people injured mostly from shooting, mauling, assault, stabbing, slapping, harassment, strafing, robbery and illegal discharge of firearms.

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Police also seized 5,000 firearms and more than 42,000 other deadly weapons, causing the arrest of 5,316 people for illegal possession.

PNP spokesperson Col. Bernard Banac noted that these numbers are lower than in the preelection periods in 2013 which had 142 victims in 94 incidents, and in 2016, with had 192 victims in 106 incidents.

“We aim to fully implement our police interventions so these [election-related violence] will no longer increase further,” PNP chief Police Gen. Oscar Albayalde said.

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The lower incidence of violence was unexpected, considering that 946 towns and cities had been identified as election “hot spots,” which needed police deployment. Three areas had been placed under the control of the Commission on Elections (Comelec)—Moises Padilla in Negros Occidental, Cotabato city in Maguindanao and Daraga in Albay.

The biggest case of pre-election violence involved the assassination of Ako Bicol Rep. Rodel Batocabe and his aide, and the wounding of six others on Dec. 22.

His rival for the mayorship of Daraga, Mayor Carlwyn Baldo of Daraga, Albay, has been detained after he surrendered to Judge Maria Therese San Juan-Lloquillano at the regional trial court on charges of double murder and six counts of attempted murder.

Baldo had denied that he had any hand in the killing and that he was being used as a “convenient scapegoat”.

Daraga Vice Mayor Perete has since been named acting town mayor.

But the most number of arrests, at 441, involved buying and selling of votes, which in punishable with imprisonment of one to six year, under the Omnibus Election Code, and this is just scratching the surface.

In Metro Manila alone, 84 arrests have been made so far. Of this number, 60 were reported in Makati – eight vote-buyers and 52 vote-sellers.

Metro Manila police chief Guillermo Eleazar noted that the 60 individuals came only from one barangay — Barangay Isidro, from which cash totalling P410,000 was seized, along with leaflets were named after the “incumbent mayor” He was referring to Mayor Abby Binay.

“… para siyang regular office na may A, B, C, D — may mga pangalan. Tapos andoon yung listahan. Kapag nakita mo yung listahan, andoon yung pangalan, precinct number, sino nagrefer sa iyo, at may pinipirmahan,” he added.

Complicating this campaign against vote buying, however, was an advice made by President Rodrigo Duterte to voters in Davao on May 9: “Just tell them, you took the money not for the votes but because you want your fare to go home.”

As described in an Inquirer report:

“The President, speaking during the grand rally of HNP’s candidates in Davao City led by his daughter Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, was already around the end of an hour-long speech at past 10 p.m. when he asked, ‘Walay ihatag nga P100?’ (We have no P100 to give?)

“The President’s query was greeted by shrieks from the audience.

“The President then turned to his former Special Assistant now senatorial candidate Bong Go, who told him it was “bawal” (not allowed).

“’Bawal? How would these people get home?’ the President asked.

“Then, he explained to his audience that since (the prohibition) is “penal,” and that they could get imprisoned for the violation, he told them to just say they were in a meeting and had borrowed money for their fare to Almendras gym, the venue for (the) rally in this city.

“His statement elicited more shrieks and applause from his audience.

“’Tell them if you don’t take the money, you will have to roam around San Pedro (Street) offering yourself there (for sale) before you could get home.’”

“The President then took a dig at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) over what he said were unrealistic regulations involving assistance to supporters and local leaders that could be misconstrued as vote buying.

“He also criticized the supposed prohibition on feeding supporters and poll watchers.

“‘You can’t let your leaders go hungry, how will you win?’” he asked in Cebuano.

“However, no money was handed out to Hugpong ng Pagbabago supporters at the miting de avance,” the Inquirer report concluded.

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