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Anti-tobacco groups flag cozy ties between tobacco companies and Philippine lawmakers as a ‘harmful’ measure making e-cigarettes more accessible to Filipinos hurdle the legislative mill amid the pandemic. Chavit Singson says there’s a simple explanation — lobby money.

Rodrigo R. Duterte is a most secretive President when it comes to the details of his wealth. To this day, eight months after the April 30 deadline for filing, he has not released a copy of his Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) for 2018.   By all indications, Duterte sticks out as the lie of his own Freedom of Information (FOI) edict.

President Duterte has appointed a new election chairman and three commissioners -- all of them from Mindanao. By 2022, Comelec will be run entirely by Duterte’s appointees. Mostly newbies with little or no experience in running national automated elections, they will administer the vote for the next President of the republic, amid calls from politicians to shift to a hybrid manual cum automated election system.

The procurement woes of the Comelec in the May 2019 elections had a backstory in an audit report the year prior. It continues to pay monthly rental for warehouse services without a valid contract. It has an overstock of paper clips, bond paper, and spiral notebooks that had been exposed to rain and the elements, and then left to rot and decay.