The Philippine Senate has ordered the arrest of a small-town mayor after she refused to appear at hearings investigating her alleged ties with Chinese criminal syndicates, a case that has captivated the nation amid tensions between Manila and Beijing.
The arrest order, signed by the Senate president on Friday and to be carried out by the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms, came after Bamban Mayor Alice Guo (郭華萍) failed to appear for a second consecutive hearing on Wednesday, citing stress.
The Senate investigation began in May after authorities raided a casino in Guo’s sleepy farming town of Bamban in March, uncovering what the authorities said were scams being perpetrated from a facility built on land partially owned by the mayor.
Guo’s lawyer, Stephen David, yesterday said the mayor was incapable of attending the hearings because of her “physical and mental health condition” owing to “massive cyberbullying and humiliation.”
“Hopefully, when her condition will improve, we will see her again during hearings,” David said.
Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros, who is leading the investigation, yesterday said the arrest order against Guo is the first step in making her “accountable to our laws.”
The Senate has also ordered the arrest of some members of Guo’s family for failing to appear at the hearings.
Guo’s case, which has shed light on criminal activity in the mostly Chinese-backed online casino industry in the Philippines, gained national attention after a senator questioned whether she was born in the Philippines, suggesting she could even be a Chinese “asset,” an accusation she denied.
The Chinese embassy in Manila did not respond to a request for comment on questions about Guo’s identity.
Guo has denied links to criminals and said she is a natural-born Philippine citizen. She has written to the Senate that she was the subject of “malicious accusations.”
Her legal team on Wednesday asked the Philippine Supreme Court to nullify the summons requesting her to appear at the hearings.
Guo’s case comes at a time of growing Philippine suspicion about China’s activities following an increasingly tense dispute over reefs and shoals in the busy waterway of the South China Sea, where both nations, as well as Taiwan and other countries, have claims.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS