A snappy salute to the 7th Marine Battalion!
Exactly four years ago today, on June 8, 2013 the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) held the National Consecration of the Philippines at 10 a.m. in all the cathedrals and churches from all over the country. Indeed how time has flown and four years have passed since we had this National Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
I had a little role in this then when I interviewed and told then CBCP Pres. Jose Palma, archbishop of Cebu that the Bishop of Leiria, Portugal tired and weary of waiting for the Vatican to declare the Fatima apparitions as divinely inspired, consecrated Portugal to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and this resulted in Portugal losing the threat of Communism from within, then it was spared the civil war just next door in Spain, and she was spared from the ravages of World War II.
After this consecration on June 8th, in just two months later, on Aug. 28, 2013 a name unfamiliar to Filipinos became a person of interest in the heart of the Filipino as Janet Lim Napoles surrendered to then Pres. Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino and given a VIP treatment. Then Pres. Aquino personally escorted Napoles to her quarters in Camp Crame in a scenario that Department of Justice (DoJ) Vitaliano Aguirre has promised to investigate.
Then five months later, on Nov. 19, 2013 the Supreme Court (SC) declared the controversial case filed by my good friend, Atty. Greco Belgica against the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) and Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) as unconstitutional. This has exposed the biggest crooks in the House of Representatives and the Senate on the list to be filed criminal charges for the misuse of public funds or people’s money!
Three years later, we elected a Mindanaoan, the Cebuano speaking Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte in a most unprecedented election of a President in this country. Sure Pres. Duterte dislikes Catholics, but rightly or wrongly, with the Maute terror group still fighting for two weeks now in Marawi City, Pres. Duterte is the right President to destroy the evil that is called ISIS who is trying to establish a caliphate in the Philippines. All these are happening, because four years ago, the Philippines was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. So let’s pray to her Immaculate Heart to bring peace to our land.
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A report about the Bank of Philippine Islands (BPI) became viral in the social media networks yesterday when irate clients of BPI reported losing tens of thousands of pesos in their bank accounts. Thankfully, BPI president and COO Cesar Consing came up in a phone interview with Cathy Yang on ANC where he revealed that BPI had shut down their systems for the day to rectify whatever glitches or “Internal Data errors” that may been committed. The BPI president apologized to their clients for this problem.
I have been a BPI client since the late 1960s and this is the first time that BPI had this problem. I got a lot of texts from friends to look into my account. But on the other hand, this will only further clog their systems all the more. As soon as BPI announces that they are back online, then that is the time I will look into my account and hopefully, nothing of this sort has happened to my account. Meanwhile let me say that the quick response by no less than the BPI president Consing was quite reassuring. I hope they can fix this problem by the time this column comes out.
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There is no doubt that the Maute terror group is losing their battle to establish a Caliphate in Marawi City thanks to our Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Surely by now they are low on ammunition and maybe losing morale with the arrest of Cayamora Maute, the father of the infamous Maute brothers who was intercepted in a Toyota van headed toward Sirawan, Davao City. The Toyota van was driven by Aljon Salazar Ismael, who was with his daughter Norjannah Balawag, son-in-law Benzarali Tingao and Kongan Alfonso Balawag, believed to be his wife, when it was stopped by a military checkpoint. With Martial Law in place, they can be held for the violent takeover of Marawi City.
Incidentally the troops of the 7th Marine Battalion captured P52.2 million in cash in a house that the Maute terror group used as a machine gun nest in the Mapandi area. The total haul totaled P79 million, which included checks worth P27 million. I have seen a similar cache of money in Facebook, usually by the late Mexican Drug Lord Pablo Escobar. We hope that the NBI or Military intelligence would as the Central Bank to dig deeper into this money so we can trace where it came from or whether this was drug money or not. A snappy salute to the soldiers of the 7th Marine Battalion not only for being brave soldiers but they are also an honest bunch of soldiers. I exhort Pres. Duterte to use that money to buy our soldiers Kevlar armored vests!
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