ANC After The Fact

A group of Filipino nurses has begun a 10-day countdown to pressure the Department of Health to complete the release of several benefits intended for health workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic at the frontlines.

For many of our overworked and underpaid nurses, the fact that the group had to resort to this speaks volumes about the kind of treatment they’re getting from the government despite their crucial role in this health crisis. 

Imagine, for instance, a nurse working long hours and earning some ten thousand pesos monthly. 

Paying her additional allowance — as mandated by law — will help… though we can all perhaps agree that she deserves much more.

The point is this — there’s a budget allocated for their benefits during the pandemic. But why are they getting them?

Is it a problem with red tape, negligence, or worse, government corruption?

President Duterte has announced that he would indeed run for vice president next year.

But he also clarified that this would depend on his daughter Sara’s plans in the 2022 elections.

If she ran for president, duterte said he would back out and so would his assistant and Senator Christopher Go for president.

At least, based on her response, Sara Duterte didn’t like what’s happening.

In fact, she said her father had confirmed to her that he would indeed run with Go as his presidential candidate. 

She said Duterte and Go should admit this in public. 

In that same meeting, Sara said her father gave her two options — support the Go-Duterte tandem or accept Go as her vice presidential candidate.

What exactly is happening, not just within the ruling PDP-Laban party, but also within the first family?

Are we seeing a real rift ahead of the 2022 elections or is this more of a show?

President Duterte has announced that he will indeed run for vice president, a decision his PDP-Laban party described as a “sacrifice.” 

But here’s the catch. The president said something else, which was removed when Malacañang aired his taped address on Tuesday night.

Out of “delicadeza,” Duterte claimed he won’t run if his daughter Sara would also seek the presidency. 

This means his long-time aide and now Senator Bong Go will not gun for the presidency as well.

Now here’s where it becomes even more interesting.

Mayor Sara Duterte later issued a statement telling her father to stop using her supposed candidacy as a reason for him to run or not to run.

But first, let’s get this straight — can an outgoing president run for vice president in the next election? What does the constitution say?

Christian Esguerra sits down with Atty. Christian Monsod, a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, which crafted the 1987 Constitution. 

New COVID-19 cases are still something to worry about especially since Metro Manila has just completed two weeks of hard lockdown.

In this episode, we talk about how the numbers will probably look in the coming days and weeks and how local governments are struggling with the new and highly infectious Delta variant.

As journalists are only good as their last byline, boxers, too, are often gauged based on their last fight. 

In his more recent bout, Manny Pacquiao suffered a unanimous decision loss to a relatively unknown but an Olympic bronze medalist from Cuba. It was indeed an upset. 

But to define Pacquiao’s legacy based on the outcome would be irresponsible foolish even. 

Boxing’s only 8-division titlist, a champion in four different decades, Pacquiao has faced—and conquered—some of the biggest and fiercest names in the sport. 

So the lost to Yordenis Ugas definitely won’t tarnish Pacquiao’s legacy in the ring. 

But, at the same time, it raised the question — is it time for the Filipino to hang them up — a possibility Pacquiao himself mentioned after the fight. 

In this episode, we’ll break down what perhaps was his final bout and what’s next for Manny Pacquiao, who also happens to be a senator and likely presidential candidate next year.

State auditors have come out with an annual report flagging the Department of Health over deficiencies worth P67.3 billion in COVID-19 funds. 

They didn’t say — at least, yet — that the money was stolen. 

But a tearful health Secretary Francisco Duque III slammed the Commission on Audit for allegedly “destroying” officials of his agency who, according to him, had lost sleep over it. 

Days before that, President Duterte had also gone after the COA saying it should stop releasing its audit findings. 

For the president, the COA was triggering “corruption by perception.”

In this episode, Christian Esguerra talks to Atty. Grace Pulido Tan, former Chairwoman of the Commission on Audit. 

She headed COA from 2011 to 2015 during which she led the scrutiny of how lawmakers had misused their pork barell allocations. 

The tedious and brave effort behind the COA special audit led to the filing of criminal cases against three senators.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III appeared at a House hearing earlier this week pouring his heart out over a Commission on Audit Report. 

The COA flagged “deficiencies” in some 67 billion pesos in funds allotted to the DOH for its COVID-19 response critical items such as the purchase of face masks and allowances for medical frontliners. 

But Duque questioned why the COA made the findings public even if the report was clearly part of its mandate. 

In his words, the COA findings destroyed the DOH though the Filipino term he used was far more colorful. 

Tonight, we’ll go deep into the COA findings and why the DOH needs to answer the issues squarely.

The scene was reminiscent of one the world witnessed 46 years ago in Saigon.

But this time, the military plane flying from the roof of the US Embassy a few days ago was evacuating citizens from Kabul. 

Despite US President Joe Biden’s confident assurance the Taliban won’t overrun the US-backed government in Afghanistan they did just that. 

And so, the nation’s capital fell swiftly and after 20 years, the Taliban— known their ruthlessness during their reign in the 1990s—are back in power.

The Taliban of today have appeared to be more conciliator saying they didn’t want to make “any internal or external enemies.”

They also promised that women would be allowed to work and go to school.

They would be “very active in society but within the framework of Islam.”

A lot of these promises, of course, remain to be seen. 

What’s certain is that Afghanistan is in such a mess and the return of the Taliban will be implications on freedom and human rights within the country — a problem that’s all too real here in the Philippines.

The Commission on Audit recently released audit reports on problems and deficiencies it found in how agencies of government were spending public funds.

The Department of Health, for instance, was flagged over some P67.3 billion in COVID-19 funds.

The COA also questioned the department’s plan to purchase two “high-end” computers worth P700,000.

There were many other findings and agencies were asked to explain. 

But in response, President Duterte slammed coa and asked the commission not to publish its reports because they taint agencies with “corruption by perception.”

This episode is about the implications of Duterte’s latest outburst on efforts to demand transparency, accountability, and honesty from public officials who are, after all, only expected to take care our hard-earned money and spend it wisely.

The two-week hard lockdown in Metro Manila is set to end this Friday. But by the looks of it, the government will need to make another tough decision ahead of that — will it extend the lockdown or lift it despite the rising number of COVID-19 cases driven by the more infectious delta variant? 

Worse, the Lambda variant has also been detected — officially — in the Philippines a case of a local transmission. 

In this episode, Christian Esguerra talks to Maristela Abenojar, President, Filipino Nurses United and Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, OCTA Research Fellow to assess whether the Enhanced Community Quarantine is working and to check on the plight of our health workers who have been working round-the-clock since the start of the pandemic but have not been receiving enough benefits for their service.