Video
The week after ‘Ondoy’
By TESSA JAMANDRE
WHEN storm “Ondoy” (“Ketsana”) struck on Sept. 26, the morning after was a picture of a devastated capital, a people in anguish and a nation at its weakest. The week after, another typhoon (“Pepeng” or “Parma”) made a landfall in Cagayan province and gave the country another scare.
While Pepeng battered Cagayan, other parts of Luzon had their share of downpour, doubling the misery of Ondoy’s victims who were still weary, hungry, sick or, worse, living a nightmare.
VERA Files visited Cainta, Rizal, one of the areas that Ondoy’s rains left severely flooded, and saw the long lines of residents waiting for relief goods and food rations. The local government had stopped the distribution as it braced for what typhoon Perma’s rains could still do to its already ravaged town.
But there was no stopping the military from reaching areas in Cainta, as well as Taytay, another town in Rizal, that have been isolated by Ondoy and saw relief for the first time in a week. Our video caught a village still under water, a flooded and cramped evacuation center, and faces of despair:
Court martial face-off
By TESSA JAMANDRE
THE mutiny case against the 28 officers in connection with the alleged February 2006 plot to withdraw support from President Gloria Arroyo is on its final stretch.
The prosecution presented on Wednesday its last and most important witness. Presidential Management Staff chief Hermogenes Esperon Jr., who was Armed Forces Chief of Staff at the time, had ordered the detention of the 28 officers—nine from the Marines led by their commandant, Maj. Gen. Renato Miranda, and 19 Army Scout Rangers led by Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim.
War-displaced civilians mark Eid’l Fitr in Mindanao evacuation centers
By TESSA JAMANDRE
AS Muslims all over the world end their monthlong prayer and fasting on Monday, their brothers who have been displaced by the fighting in Mindanao continue to sacrifice in cramped evacuation centers. They are celebrating their second Eid’l Fitr in the camps after the wish they made at the start of Ramadan to mark this annual rite in their homes went unfulfilled.
The government and the Muslim secessionist group Moro Islamic Liberation Front vow to restart the stalled peace talks, but it remains unclear when normalcy will be restored to the lives of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Maguindanao. For now they will have to keep counting their days in temporary shelters and live on food aid.
Since fighting broke out in August last year, government has been serving about 700,000 evacuees in 567 evacuation centers in Mindanao. The Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center said this is the world’s largest displacement last year and that the Philippines was the most neglected displacement situation in 2008.
VERA Files recently visited Datu Piang town in Maguindanao, which has practically become a big refugee site with 5,513 families, and documented the plight of the evacuees through this video.
Teodoro accepts Lakas-Kampi mandate
SHORTLY after the Lakas-Kampi-CMD coalition declared him on Wednesday afternoon its presidential candidate in next year’s elections, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro appeared before his followers at the Quezon City Sports Club to accept the challenge of leading his party to victory. VERA Files‘ Tessa Jamandre shares her video of Teodoro’s selection as standard-bearer at the Lakas-Kampi-CMD meeting at the Edsa Shangrila Hotel and his acceptance speech at the Quezon City Sports Club:
MediaNation: Noynoy wins mock election; Smartmatic-TIM tests automated poll
By LUZ RIMBAN
SEN. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III won the presidency at a mock election held to demonstrate the use of automated voting which will be done nationwide for the first time in May 2010.
The mock voting took place Friday at the 6th MediaNation Summit, an annual gathering of members of the news media organized by the non-government organization Pagbabago.
Twenty media practitioners were selected to test the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) during a session in which Miguel Avila, Technical Support Manager of Smartmatic-TIM Corp., explained the automated voting system.
The PCOS machine showed the count: Ten out of the 20 voters chose Aquino, three chose Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero, three chose Sen. Manuel Villar, while Vice President Noli de Castro got one vote. Three ballots were invalidated
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Noynoy’s decision
FILIPINOS awoke Wednesday morning to the news that Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III had decided to run for president in 2010 under the banner of the Liberal Party.
Aquino, the only son of the late former president Corazon Aquino and the slain former senator Benigno Aquino Jr., said he would continue his parents’ struggle for democracy. VERA Files’ Tessa Jamandre shared this video clip of Aquino’s announcement.
U.S. poll expert urges vigilance even with automated elections
By TESSA JAMANDRE
VIGILANCE.
This was what an American election watchdog expert and leader of a voters’ advocacy group said must be maintained even as the Philippines will automate its national elections for the first time in May 2010.
Kay Maxwell, executive director of the nonprofit World Affairs Forum and the 16th president of the League of Women Voters of the U.S., told a lecture organized by the Harvard Club of the Philippines on Wednesday that it takes more than just machines and computers to make an election credible.
“No election system is perfect. Vigilance must be maintained to guard against fraud and corruption,” said Maxwell, who also chairs the U.S. League of Women Voters Education Fund.
Their fathers’ daughters
THE world has just celebrated Father’s Day, but for three young girls, it was a day spent in prison, their fathers being the detained military officers Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, Col. Ariel Querubin, and former Navy Capt. now Senator Antonio Trillanes IV.
VERA Files‘ Tessa Jamandre spent some with these young girls–Aika Lim, Faye Querubin and Thea Trillanes–and talked to them about their fathers’ lives and beliefs. Below is her report.
Marcelino denies snubbing NBI
MAJ. Ferdinand Marcelino, head of the Special Enforcement Service of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), denies criticism he snubbed a probe being conducted by the National Bureau of Investigations into the “Alabang Boys Scandal.”
Marcelino’s team arrested three men–Richard Brodett, Joseph Tecson and Jorge Joseph–suspected of peddling drugs in a buy-bust operation in Alabang last September. He also accused prosecutors of taking bribes from the suspects in exchange for their release.
VERA Files interviewed Marcelino and filed this report.
(producers: Yvonne Chua, Ellen Tordesillas, Booma Cruz, Ibarra Mateo and Luz Rimban)