The Senate holds an executive session so that the chamber can get the views of individual senators and to allow them to raise questions or concerns that they prefer not to express in public.
This was the manifestation of Sen. Pia Cayetano in last Tuesday’s session.
She said the chamber’s decisions on sensitive matters will be based on the consensus of its members, as discussed in plenary and in the executive session.
Ousted Bamban Mayor Alice Guo, who is being linked to criminal syndicates operating in POGOs (Philippine Overseas Gaming Operations) in her province, and possibly, elsewhere in the country, had requested the Senate for such an executive session.
Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito is inclined to support her request to get more information about her bosses in what appeared to be an international crime ring.
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Ejercito, a member of the committee on women, children and family affairs of the upper chamber, said he and other senators would try hard to squeeze Guo for information about POGOs and her escape in mid-July.
In justifying his affirmation to Guo’s request, Ejercito said: “I think she is just a pawn in a bigger web of an international syndicate. I hope that if we give her an executive session, she can point out who is really behind the POGOs” during a radio interview over dzBB.
The Senate ordered Guo’s arrest after she and her supposed siblings, Shiela and Wesley, failed to attend the series of public hearings of the Senate committee on women looking into alleged POGO-related crimes like scamming and human trafficking.
Confidential
But Sen. Risa Hontiveros, the committee chairperson, cautioned that information obtained in executive session cannot be divulged to the public, the Philippine Star reported. (This is exactly what happened in the last executive session of the Senate in the Pharmally case involving the anomalous COVID-19 vaccines that the public never heard of).
Ejercito, on the other hand, said senators would discuss whether to make public the name of the individual written by Guo on a sheet of paper, who allegedly owns a yacht and assisted her in escape.
He noted such a move “can also be at the discretion of the Senate committee chairperson. That’s why she put (the name on the paper) because she is also afraid for her life,”
More questions
The public needs to know who helped Guo enter politics.
And Ejercito was right in asking what if China is already feeding us, they are entering like this? How did she get in?
Ejercito does not believe that no Filipino helped them escape.
“For those who made a way, there is definitely a Filipino. That’s why I told PAOCC (Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission) not to immediately conclude because the real way (of escaping) is covered.”
Ejercito added: “the DOJ (Department of Justice) and the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) have different theories, through the backdoor. We must conclude if we are really sure of our facts. We are not sure yet because the DOJ and NBI are looking at the backdoor in Bongao. That’s why we look at all the flights during that period, the yacht (story) might just be a diversion, we should not be closed (to other theories).”
Institutions breached
Former senator Panfilo Lacson posted on Facebook his suggestion for the intelligence community to take a deeper look not only into the background of Guo but also her connections whose fingerprints matched Chinese national Guo Hua Ping’s due to the potential risk to national security.
Lacson voiced concerns that Guo, if not exposed by the PAOCC in her illegal activities including the possibility that she is a spy, could have the resources to run for congresswoman or even higher office – and have access to sensitive documents in the Philippine government.
“Testimonials coming from her former constituents were one in saying that she’s governing well in Bamban, Tarlac. It cannot be ruled out that if she gets out of her issues now, she might run for congresswoman. And if she were a foreign spy, that is bad for us because as a member of Congress, she would have access to highly classified documents due to her high-security clearance,” he said.
Security risks
In a radio interview aired at dwIZ over the weekend, Lacson said serious risks to the country’s institutions and security, notably the prostituted segments of the Philippine official documents system, can allow aliens or criminal syndicates to control key positions through elections were exposed in the Alice Guo POGO case.
The former senator noted that “it’s hard for just one person (Guo) to pull off” the documentation fraud of Guo’s birth certificate which NBI exposed had the same fingerprint as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping.
“Getting a fake Filipino birth certificate through a sham process of “late birth registration,” and then setting up businesses while laundering money for wanted criminal figures from other countries, and eventually seeking and winning elections as a pseudo-Filipino” is very dangerous.
He said this is the classic network needed for a spy, because “you can pull off something that an ordinary person cannot.”
Lacson, a known anti-corruption advocate, conceded that it has become easy to pull off documents fraud because many locals are easy to corrupt.
“That’s another major concern. It exposed the weakness or vulnerabilities of our agencies tasked to. safeguard the integrity of records,” he added.
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