Making It Fun in the Philippines

  Here's a video of the late Carlos Celdran at the premiere of the documentary Give Up Tomorrow - a documentary that was made popular because of the problematic Jacqueline Comes Home movie. On September 15, 1997 , Francisco Juan "Paco" G. Larranaga was ILLEGALLY arrested without a proper warrant. Celdran himself last 2012 had spoken such words that he called it "trial by publicity". The big issue was that two big cases pinned two INNOCENT people namely Hubert Webb and Paco. Hubert was in America with his family when the Vizconde Massacre happened. Poor Lauro Vizconde died believing Hubert was guilty of murdering his family and maybe many members of the Public Attorney's Office (PAO) were still misled by false evidence. Paco was in Manila on July 16, 1997, when the crime allegedly happened.  After watching Give Up Tomorrow and Crime Investigation Asia: The Vizconde Massacre  - there are a lot of inconsistencies that need to be addressed in both cases. Jessica...

I remembered that I wrote about the need to be cautious about reinstating the death penalty . The reason behind my argument is that the faulty Philippine judicial system has nearly ended the lives of two innocent people namely Hubert Webb and Paco Larranaga. The Vizconde Massacre trial and the Chiong Sisters trial turned out to be very one-sided. Singapore doesn't have a good economy because of the death penalty - it has a good economy because of its adherence to free trade policies. Even some presidential countries like Taiwan and South Korea (where the death penalty is non-existent) have good economies because of free trade policies. The argument for life imprisonment isn't always from a pro-life side. Sometimes, it's possibly just your sadistic side showing up. Do you remember the Boysen commercial where the person ended up growing old in jail? The person really has a huge miserable existence. I don't think I'd want to spend the rest of my life in jail eating...

Senator Bato Dela Rosa is definitely wrong about giving former mayor Antonio Sanchez another chance after that heinous crime. Like I said, Sanchez should've been executed by lethal injection back when the death penalty was still available. But did we forget that Leni Loud Robredo herself also said something about giving second chances to criminals too? Here's what Philippine Star revealed last December 3, 2016: “We believe that every person should be given a second chance at life. Convicted criminals should be rehabilitated and be given a chance for reintegration… We should not give up on those who have done wrong, and we should exhaust all means possible to help them rehabilitate and be reintegrated in the society,” she said. The statement made by Leni Loud is no different than Bato's error about Sanchez. So why even blame President Duterte for the possible Sanchez release? Senator Dela Rosa is definitely wrong and so is Leni Loud. So again Dilawan why a...

I did write about the death penalty issue -- something that I always feel needs to be heavily studied upon before reimplementing it. I think it's a problem when legislators don't know their priorities. The death penalty is useless when there's a lousy system behind it. It won't do good if all issues such as the roots of heinous crimes aren't addressed. One of the biggest roots of why heinous crimes happen is poverty. Big time crooks love poor people because they're too easy to exploit. One of the biggest causes of poverty in the Philippines is not just corrupt politicians but also poor economic policies such as economic protectionism. How does economic protectionism guarantee that poverty will increase? A good question to ask is how many Filipino businessmen are there and how many Filipinos are in need of jobs. If the supply-demand gap is that huge then you know it's not a good sign. The problem with 60/40 ownership of foreign investments is that forei...

The death penalty can be an effective deterrent to crime if there's an effective system running it. It should be treated as a missile. It doesn't matter how effective the missile is but the wrong guiding system can cause the missile to hit the unintended targets. Unfortunately, the current Philippine system is riddled in corruption because of the system and not just the people  which makes nearly every objection towards the death penalty right now valid . The classic argument that the death penalty may end up executing innocent people by mistake is a valid argument. That's something that can be common in the Philippines due to easily bribable government functions and incompetence in criminal investigations. Do you remember the time when the late Leo Echegaray who was a POOR CRIMINAL got executed? Sure, poor criminals aren't exempt from justice but what about rich criminals? The execution of Echegaray is nothing compared to if rich criminals or even corrupt politician...