In the News: Dana Batnag

Remember Dana Batnag? We first blogged about her here and here. In our first post about her, we mentioned that Dana, then only 13 years old, won an international song writing contest sponsored by the UNICEF. You’re wondering about the song she wrote? It’s that very popular song, I Am But a Small Voice, which you sang every time you celebrated United Nations Day.

Anyways, Dana now works as a foreign correspondent with Jiji Press, a Japanese news agency. She’s in the news today because she is suspected of helping alleged coup plotter Capt. Nicanor Faeldon escape during the Manila Penn incident. Dana, whose dad comes from Besao, Mt. Province, denied the accusation and has received the support of her fellow journalists.

Here’s a news report from GMA News on this latest effort of the administration to scare members of the media:

So the RPN video footage in this report is supposed to be the evidence that points to our kailiyan as the suspected journalist who aided an alleged coup plotter? It looks to me like they are just talking. She is a reporter for Christ’s sake. She can interview any news source which Captain Faeldon definitely is. Besides if she is going to commit the crime of aiding an alleged coup plotter, would she do it in a room full of people and cameras?

I also don’t get the story that Faeldon was able to escape because he had a press identification card which Dana supposedly gave him? Really? You have probably the most wanted man in the country for the past five years and he was able to escape because of some silly identification card? So were police authorities too busy looking at ID cards such that they forgot to look at the faces of people they are inspecting? How dumb is that? No wonder Captain Faeldon has been eluding authorities for years. If an ID card is all it takes to escape from hundreds of police and military men who are purposely looking for you, I wonder what a simple wig will do?
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Photo of the Day: CHARM Project

What is CHARM-P (Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resource Management Project)? Is it the success story that some of its supporters say it is? Or is it just one of those foreign funded projects that were quite successful in producing glossy brochures and voluminous reports (complete with vision, mission, goals, and bar graphs, and pie charts) but had very little impact in Cordillera communities?

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Are You a Limahong Descendant? Part II

In Part 1 of this topic, we mentioned that the legend of Limahong hiding and begetting children in the Cordilleras is most likely just a legend. But how do we explain the “Chinese” features of some Igorots/iCordilleras? I think it’s because our ancestors really did come from mainland Asia as Arcibald wrote in our earlier post, .

According to the current prevailing theory, people from the Philippines came from the north and not from the south. So as Edwin writes in his post here, it would seem like the migration wave theory (i.e., the Philippines was populated by waves of Negritos, then Indonesians, then Malays) that we learned in school may not be true at all.

Anyways, going back to the “Chineseness” of some Igorot groups, did you know that Barangay Tabaao in Kapangan, Benguet has a pretty significant number of people of Chinese descent? How did this come about?
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Probers: Politics Behind Mayor Cesar Rafael’s Murder

Come on people in power, let’s have a gun ban not only during elections but forever and ever. Politicians, of course, should be the first to surrender their guns. Here’s the latest update on the murder of Paracelis Mayor Cesar Rafael.

Politics behind murder of mayor, probers say
By Dexter See/Manila Bulletin

Bontoc, Mountain Province — Police probers here said that politics is behind the murder of Paracelis Mayor Ceasar Rafael on Dec. 25, 2007.

They said they are now closing in on the suspects in the first sensational political crime in this province.

Senior Supt. Joseph Adnol, director of the Mountain Province police office, said that the investigators have ruled out revenge and personal grudge as motives, noting that circumstantial evidence point to politics as the cause of the murder of the mayor.

He said that the investigators are now validating the information on the five to 10 suspects who, they said, have not yet left the province due to the tightened security they have implemented at various exit and entry points.

However, Adnol did not give any description about the politicians involved in the killing, saying it is still premature to disclose such details because this might prejudice an on-going operation against the mastermind and the killers.

The men who carried out the murder plot on the long-time municipal chief executive of Paracelis are said to be aligned with an influential person in the town.
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