Handy Printing & Publishing

06/02/2025

VP SARA IMPEACHED; 3 BATANGAS REPS VOTE FOR IT

With 215 congressmen signing it, the House of Representatives impeached Vice President Sara Duterte on Wednesday, Jan. 5.

House majority leader Mannix Dalipe said the pro-impeachment vote exceeded the one-third (of the total House members) threshold required under the constitutional provision on impeachment.

Three Batangas representatives – Gerville R. Luistro (2nd District), Eric Buhain (1st District), Ma. Theresa Collantes (3rd District) – were among those who signed the impeachment complaint.

Three party-list representatives known to have Batangas roots – Nicanor Briones (AGAP), Rey Reyes (Anakalusugan) and Edwin Gardiola (CWS) – also endorsed the impeachment move.

Immediately, the House appointed 11 members to serve as prosecutors in the impeachment trial, namely Luistro, Romeo Acop, Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez, Joel Chua, Raul Angelo "Jil" B**galon, Loreto Acharon, Marcelino Libanan, Arnan Panaligan, Ysabel Maria Zamora, Lorenz Defensor, and Jonathan Keith Flores.

The impeachment complaint revolves around six major allegations, the most damning of which, according to House leaders, is the alleged conspiracy to kill the President, the First Lady, and the Speaker.

House investigators presented evidence of the Vice President’s supposed public admission that she had allegedly hired an assassin to kill the three in case she was killed.

Duterte had also previously spoken about “imagining” the decapitation of the President, statements that fueled national security concerns.

Lawmakers argued that allowing Duterte to remain in office poses a direct threat to national stability, making impeachment necessary.

Malversation in the disbursement of Php 612.5 million in confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education during her tenure as secretary were also among those in the articles of impeachment.

House investigation showed, according to the impeachment complaint, that Php 254.8 million in from the OVP’s confidential funds were disbursed to 1,322 “fictitious beneficiaries with no birth records”.

At the DepED, investigators also uncovered Php 43.2 million in alleged ghost transactions that involved 405 fake names, the complaint said, not to mention alleged mishandling of funds by individuals not authorized under the law.

These blatant financial irregularities constitute technical malversation, graft, and corruption, forming a strong case for impeachment, lawmakers said.

Duterte is also accused of bribery and financial manipulation within the DepEd.

Lawmakers said evidence suggests she approved monetary gifts and bribes to high-ranking officials handling procurement and bidding processes.

Among those implicated are former DepEd undersecretary Gloria Jumamil-Mercado (Procurement head); Bids and Awards Committee member Resty Osias; DepEd chief accountant Rhunna Catalan; and special disbursing officer Edward Fajarda.

Investigations further showed that lawyer Reynold Munsayac, Duterte’s former spokesperson, attempted to rig the DepEd Computerization Program in favor of preferred contractors, an act that violates the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

The Vice President is also being accused of unexplained wealth and failure to disclose assets.

Scrutiny of Duterte’s Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) showed a quadrupling of her net worth from 2007 to 2017, without a legitimate increase in income.

The complaint also alleges that at least Php2 billion in suspicious transactions linked to joint bank accounts shared with former president Rodrigo Duterte have been uncovered. From 2006 to 2015, the Vice President was also found to have a total unexplained income of Php 111.6 million.

The impeachment complaint pointed out that failure to fully disclose assets and sources of income is a culpable violation of the Constitution, hence impeachable.

29/01/2025

Over a Cup of Barako / By F.E. Olimpo

AN EXPANDING ACTORS' GUILD AT THE SENATE

In other countries, such as South Korea, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc., governments hire entertainers and movie personalities to project “soft power” in order to change the behavior of other countries towards them.

In the Philippines, we have been hiring (electing should be the right word) movie personalities/ entertainers to run the government -- to change its behavior towards other countries, as in the case with pro-China Robin Padilla.
***
Soft power, according to the Irregular Warfare Center, a US think-tank, “refers to a nation’s ability to shape the preferences and behaviors” of other people “through persuasion and attraction rather than coercion.”

It is the opposite of “hard power,” which refers to “a state’s use of coercion, threats, or military power” to change the behavior of other governments, “counter adversarial narratives” and influence global perceptions.

According to this American think-tank, which helps the US defense department adopt unconventional tactics to achieve “strategic objectives” abroad, “foreign governments recognize the immense reach and impact the entertainment industry has in shaping popular culture and global narratives.”
***
If you think the rise in international popularity of K-Pop (Korean Pop) is incidental, think again. Over the last two decades, K-Pop music has been used by South Korea as propaganda tool against North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and, to China’s displeasure, its support for Taiwan in the latter’s political struggle against mainland China. In short, this is what soft power is all about: the state's use of entertainment .people for its overseas agenda.
***
It's the other way around in our country. The quick passage recently of a bill in both the House and the Senate conferring citizenship on a Chinese national with alleged shady background shows the growing influence of entertainment people in state affairs.

The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Francis Tolentino, himself an “entertainer” infamous for his 2015 Playgirls debacle, passed almost unanimously in the Upper Chamber, save for Sen. Risa Hontiveros’s “no” vote.

All four professional actors moonlighting as senators -- Padilla, B**g Revilla, Lito Lapid and Jinggoy Estrada-- said “yes” to the controversial bill without a bit of a whimper. The rest, again except Sen. Risa, probably found the actors’ guild’s gesticulation entertaining that they went for it with not even a token objection.

But wait. Things could be far worse after the May elections, when the actors’ guild had probably expanded with several newcomers from the entertainment world and the media! -- BARAKO!, Jan. 27-Feb. 2, 2025 Issue

Send a message to learn more

29/01/2025

This week's issue of BARAKO!, Batangas's only weekly magazine.

Cover Story
BARAKO! Magazine, January 27-February 2, 2025

ERIC DE VEYRA: THE VICO SOTTO OF BATANGAS?

By F.E. OLIMPO
The US State Department recently named Pasig City Mayor Victor "Vico" Sotto one of the world's "anticorruption champions," the only Filipino in a list of 12 people around the world known to have demonstrated leadership, courage, and impact in preventing, exposing, and combating corruption.

As one of the awardees of the US government’s “International Anticorruption Champions Award,” Sotto, 35, probably the youngest in the field, stands tall among some of the most respected personalities in their respective countries. These include Albania’s Ardian Dvorani, judge and member of the Justice Appointments Council; Ecuador’s attorney general Diana Salazar; Ruslan Ryaboshapka, former prosecutor general in Ukraine; India’s Anjali Bhardwaj, an active member of the Right to Information Movement; to name just four.

So how did Vico Sotto become an anti-corruption icon recognized not just in the country but globally?

Dr. Cenon Alfonso, dean at the Ateneo de Manila University, has the answer: “His early engagement in public service, marked by his advocacy for transparency, led to his election as a city councilor in Pasig” and eventually as mayor.

What Dr. Alfonso missed to mention as one of Vico’s sterling attributes is his deep Christian faith and upbringing which, many people believe, could be the most important attribute that shaped him into what he is now, a model public servant.

Son of comedian/TV host Vic Sotto, Vico grew up with his mother, Coney Reyes, a movie actress and a self-avowed born-again Christian. She instilled in Vico and all her children priceless Christian values and the fear of the Lord.

Sotto himself underscored the need for a healthy fear of God in public governance. "I think it's really important for us to have leaders with the fear and love of God,” he said during his early days in politics, although he clarified that it doesn't mean policy-making would be based on it.

"My grounding and the fact that I grew up in church with people who are watching me and making sure that I don't do anything [wrong], I think that's very important," he added.

Incidentally, a local candidate avidly subscribes to that idea. Eric de Veyra, of Rosario, Batangas, believes that the only way the country can move forward is for people to elect candidates “na may takot sa Diyos.”

De Veyra, a pastor by vocation, is running for the first time in the professional political league (he ran and won as Sangguniang Kabataan councilor in his town in his younger days) for provincial board member, a position his father, Jessie de Veyra, is retiring from at the end of his third consecutive three-year term in May.

Government leaders steeped in Christian values, he told Barako! in an interview, are expected to be genuinely honest, have word of honor (credibility), and “caring just like Jesus.”

He may not be aware of it but Pastor Eric, as members of his congregation, Jesus the Annointed One, calls him, appears to be following Vico Sotto’s footsteps. Like Vico, Eric is running for the first time for a political position, a seat in the Batangas provincial board, a local legislative body no different from Pasig’s city council to which Vico won as councilor in 2016.

Like Vico, Eric, now 45, has been engaged in public service since his younger days. Right after graduating law in his early 20s, he joined the administrative staff of his father, Jessie de Veyra, a member of the Batangas provincial board or bokal, assisting him in his various people-oriented projects.

During his father’s nine years of service as board member, in which he rose from being a mere assistant to chief of staff, Eric became more and more involved in his father’s pet projects on livelihood, health and scholarships -- collectively known for its acronym and slogan “HALA Bira -- Alagang De Veyra”.

HALA, which stands for Health, Agriculture, Livelihood and Academics, has had hundreds of beneficiaries throughout the 4th district of Batangas. In San Juan, Batangas, it has provided start-up capital and other support to coffee growers and oyster farmers. Through its scholarship program, HALA has helped no fewer than 10,000 needy students finish college.

His father’s scholarship program, which he helped carve and implement, is bereft of politics, unlike many other study grants from politicians. The usual practice, he says, is to give poor students a one- or two-year scholarship to spread the budget and accommodate as many beneficiaries as possible.

Consequently, those removed from the program dropped out, leaving them unemployed, rendering such study programs phenomenal failures.

HALA Bira does it differently, however. “Once you are chosen as scholar, you will be a scholar until you graduate,” Eric says. “Tulong na hindi namumulitika.” It is better to have fewer scholars who are able to finish than have so many who drop out at the end because funding has been spread so thinly, he says.

Another popular project he and his father are into is the free distribution of reading glasses to senior citizens, most of whom indigent, and the free distribution of maintenance medicines for hundreds of hypertensive folk.

After many years of helping his father alleviate the plight of the poor in the district, he can’t imagine himself simply leaving active public service along with him. With his father’s last term coming to an end this year, he can’t in conscience just turn his back on his father’s pet projects, which have helped countless Batangueños improve their lives over the years.

Hence, the decision to run.

But Eric is not your traditional type of politician. Like Vico, he doesn’t believe in pleasing people to be popular. He believes in doing right no matter what. And he believes time is ripe for the right people to win in this election.

“Sinasabi ko sa tatay ko, iba na ang panahon ngayon. I will win not because I have pleased many people but because of the Lord.”
Aside from his commitment to care for the poor, as Jesus mandates, he adds, he plans to be an advocate against corruption by setting a good example for other government officials to emulate.

There is no reason to doubt he can do it. He grew up steeped in Christian values -- as Vico was. He was in his third year of law when he became a born-again Christian. And right after graduation, instead of delving into law practice, he chose to be a youth pastor of their church, becoming a full-fledged pastor in no time.

With love for and fear of the Lord having shaped his entire life, he is not one to pay nothing more than lip-service to honesty as a virtue. Thus, one can be sure he won’t steal from government.

Pastor Eric is married to a medical practitioner, Dr. Haydee Buenafe de Veyra, with whom he has four children, three boys and a girl. He has a thriving slaughterhouse business with slaughtering facilities in Sta. Rosa, Laguna; Kalibo, Aklan; Calapan, Mindoro; and, Bauan, Batangas. And he also has a dealership in new vehicles.

These only mean one thing: he and his family can live comfortably without dipping his fingers in government coffers.

Add to that his genuine love for and fear of the Lord, the same compulsion that has driven Vico Sotto into what he is today, then you have an iron-clad guarantee that Pastor Eric de Veyra will do only the right thing if elected -- as members of his church and the public at large expect him to do.

PHOTO: Pastor Eric de Veyra with one of the farmer-beneficiaries of the "HALA Bira- Alagang De Veyra" program.

29/01/2025

Cover Story
BARAKO! Magazine, January 27-February 2, 2025

ERIC DE VEYRA: THE VICO SOTTO OF BATANGAS?

By F.E. OLIMPO
The US State Department recently named Pasig City Mayor Victor "Vico" Sotto one of the world's "anticorruption champions," the only Filipino in a list of 12 people around the world known to have demonstrated leadership, courage, and impact in preventing, exposing, and combating corruption.

As one of the awardees of the US government’s “International Anticorruption Champions Award,” Sotto, 35, probably the youngest in the field, stands tall among some of the most respected personalities in their respective countries. These include Albania’s Ardian Dvorani, judge and member of the Justice Appointments Council; Ecuador’s attorney general Diana Salazar; Ruslan Ryaboshapka, former prosecutor general in Ukraine; India’s Anjali Bhardwaj, an active member of the Right to Information Movement; to name just four.

So how did Vico Sotto become an anti-corruption icon recognized not just in the country but globally?

Dr. Cenon Alfonso, dean at the Ateneo de Manila University, has the answer: “His early engagement in public service, marked by his advocacy for transparency, led to his election as a city councilor in Pasig” and eventually as mayor.

What Dr. Alfonso missed to mention as one of Vico’s sterling attributes is his deep Christian faith and upbringing which, many people believe, could be the most important attribute that shaped him into what he is now, a model public servant.

Son of comedian/TV host Vic Sotto, Vico grew up with his mother, Coney Reyes, a movie actress and a self-avowed born-again Christian. She instilled in Vico and all her children priceless Christian values and the fear of the Lord.

Sotto himself underscored the need for a healthy fear of God in public governance. "I think it's really important for us to have leaders with the fear and love of God,” he said during his early days in politics, although he clarified that it doesn't mean policy-making would be based on it.

"My grounding and the fact that I grew up in church with people who are watching me and making sure that I don't do anything [wrong], I think that's very important," he added.

Incidentally, a local candidate avidly subscribes to that idea. Eric de Veyra, of Rosario, Batangas, believes that the only way the country can move forward is for people to elect candidates “na may takot sa Diyos.”

De Veyra, a pastor by vocation, is running for the first time in the professional political league (he ran and won as Sangguniang Kabataan councilor in his town in his younger days) for provincial board member, a position his father, Jessie de Veyra, is retiring from at the end of his third consecutive three-year term in May.

Government leaders steeped in Christian values, he told Barako! in an interview, are expected to be genuinely honest, have word of honor (credibility), and “caring just like Jesus.”

He may not be aware of it but Pastor Eric, as members of his congregation, Jesus the Annointed One, calls him, appears to be following Vico Sotto’s footsteps. Like Vico, Eric is running for the first time for a political position, a seat in the Batangas provincial board, a local legislative body no different from Pasig’s city council to which Vico won as councilor in 2016.

Like Vico, Eric, now 45, has been engaged in public service since his younger days. Right after graduating law in his early 20s, he joined the administrative staff of his father, Jessie de Veyra, a member of the Batangas provincial board or bokal, assisting him in his various people-oriented projects.

During his father’s nine years of service as board member, in which he rose from being a mere assistant to chief of staff, Eric became more and more involved in his father’s pet projects on livelihood, health and scholarships -- collectively known for its acronym and slogan “HALA Bira -- Alagang De Veyra”.

HALA, which stands for Health, Agriculture, Livelihood and Academics, has had hundreds of beneficiaries throughout the 4th district of Batangas. In San Juan, Batangas, it has provided start-up capital and other support to coffee growers and oyster farmers. Through its scholarship program, HALA has helped no fewer than 10,000 needy students finish college.

His father’s scholarship program, which he helped carve and implement, is bereft of politics, unlike many other study grants from politicians. The usual practice, he says, is to give poor students a one- or two-year scholarship to spread the budget and accommodate as many beneficiaries as possible.

Consequently, those removed from the program dropped out, leaving them unemployed, rendering such study programs phenomenal failures.

HALA Bira does it differently, however. “Once you are chosen as scholar, you will be a scholar until you graduate,” Eric says. “Tulong na hindi namumulitika.” It is better to have fewer scholars who are able to finish than have so many who drop out at the end because funding has been spread so thinly, he says.

Another popular project he and his father are into is the free distribution of reading glasses to senior citizens, most of whom indigent, and the free distribution of maintenance medicines for hundreds of hypertensive folk.

After many years of helping his father alleviate the plight of the poor in the district, he can’t imagine himself simply leaving active public service along with him. With his father’s last term coming to an end this year, he can’t in conscience just turn his back on his father’s pet projects, which have helped countless Batangueños improve their lives over the years.

Hence, the decision to run.

But Eric is not your traditional type of politician. Like Vico, he doesn’t believe in pleasing people to be popular. He believes in doing right no matter what. And he believes time is ripe for the right people to win in this election.

“Sinasabi ko sa tatay ko, iba na ang panahon ngayon. I will win not because I have pleased many people but because of the Lord.”
Aside from his commitment to care for the poor, as Jesus mandates, he adds, he plans to be an advocate against corruption by setting a good example for other government officials to emulate.

There is no reason to doubt he can do it. He grew up steeped in Christian values -- as Vico was. He was in his third year of law when he became a born-again Christian. And right after graduation, instead of delving into law practice, he chose to be a youth pastor of their church, becoming a full-fledged pastor in no time.

With love for and fear of the Lord having shaped his entire life, he is not one to pay nothing more than lip-service to honesty as a virtue. Thus, one can be sure he won’t steal from government.

Pastor Eric is married to a medical practitioner, Dr. Haydee Buenafe de Veyra, with whom he has four children, three boys and a girl. He has a thriving slaughterhouse business with slaughtering facilities in Sta. Rosa, Laguna; Kalibo, Aklan; Calapan, Mindoro; and, Bauan, Batangas. And he also has a dealership in new vehicles.

These only mean one thing: he and his family can live comfortably without dipping his fingers in government coffers.

Add to that his genuine love for and fear of the Lord, the same compulsion that has driven Vico Sotto into what he is today, then you have an iron-clad guarantee that Pastor Eric de Veyra will do only the right thing if elected -- as members of his church and the public at large expect him to do.

PHOTO: Pastor Eric de Veyra with one of the farmer-beneficiaries of the "HALA Bira- Alagang De Veyra" program.

25/01/2025

27/06/2024

Sino po may part ng Hamada na tulad nito? Gear po ito na nagpapaikot sa ink roller sa numbering section ng Hamada. Please call 09172788399. Thanks.

22/05/2024

LF Sord operator. Part-time. Batangas area. Tel. 09172788399

Send a message to learn more

19/05/2024

PERFECT-BINDING SERVICES now available in Batangas. Printers, jobbers, book publishers in Batangas and nearby provinces no longer need to go to Manila for their perfect-binding requirements. Handy Printing (09985489562) in Rosario, Batangas, now offers book-binding and lamination services.

26/04/2024

FRIEND REQUEST
Hoping to reconnect with a former boss, I sent a friend request to Salvii Casino, a former executive at ABS-CBN and my superior/mentor at Channel 4 in the late 70s. Later browsing through his Facebook posts, I came across a message addressed to him: "Happy Blessed Birthday In Heaven Director Salvii Casino, a friend and my Direktor." Quickly cancelled the request. Baka sumagot at biglang magyayang pasyalan siya!

20/03/2024

QUIBOLOY WILL GO SCOT FREE, BELIEVE ME!

I don't believe Pastor Quibs would spend time in jail despite his many legal troubles. His lawyers could invoke the insanity defense, which they could easily prove in court. Judges certainly know that anyone claiming to own all the riches in the world, including the US bullion depository in Fort Knox, should have his head examined.