How the machines controlled the election... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – The democratic election principle says voting must be kept secret while the counting must be made open and transparent. But with the way things went in the recently-concluded May 10 elections, things happened the other way around. At the Sangguniang...

Bayan Muna member killed in Panabo... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – Over a week after the May 10 polls, another activist was killed by still unidentified gunmen in Panabo City. Jim Galez, a member of the regional secretariat of partylist group Bayan Muna, was driving his motorcycle on the road to Barangay Little Panay in Panabo...

Duterte daughter and father proclaimed a... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – The proclamation of winners was stalled here on May 11, pending the arrival of results from the remaining seven polling clusters in the districts of Paquibato, Tugbok and Agdao. But as of 6 pm on May 12, while still awaiting the election results from the last...

Snail-paced voting blamed on new cluster... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – It was not the machine glitches that many people were worried about but the poll clerk’s hunt for names of registered voters and other verification procedures that slowed down the voting process in the recently-concluded elections. At Cluster 208 of the...

Davao City placed under Comelec control... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has placed the city under its control in the country’s first automated elections. Ray Sumalipao, Comelec regional director, said this means that the poll body will be in control of election matters previously handled by...

Ka Jinggoy in Prison: Captive but Unbowe... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today TAGUM CITY —“They may imprison our bodies, but not our hearts and minds,” a voice through the microphone echoed outside the gates of the Davao Provincial Rehabilitation Center. “Even in jail, we are still NPAs. As political detainees we have the right to be...

A YEAR AFTER: No Justice In Sight For R... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – Tormented by the results of the police investigation into her daughter’s rape-slay case and by the continued surveillance by the military, Evangeline Pitao, mother of Rebelyn Pitao, has declared she has lost trust in the government’s Task Force...

Davao lawyers oppose midnight appointmen... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – Davao lawyers are restive over the issue of the President’s impending appointment of a new Chief Justice, following a Supreme Court ruling which allows her to do this despite a standing ban on this action in the Philippine Constitution. Eight lawyers’ groups,...

Seven Sta. Cruz farmers say they’re fa... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – A 74-year-old man, a 32-year-old mother, three farmers and two Bagobo lumads find themselves accused of the military’s trumped up charges as the government’s Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL) deadline to end the four-decades of Communist insurgency nears. For opposing...

IEDs found in Davao City, Duterte to ass... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY– Police and the Task Force Davao are putting up mobile checkpoints to secure the entire city against threats after the discovery of two improvised explosive devices in two separate downtown areas on Thursday, February 26. A man leaving a package at the counter...

The long trail to justice... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – “Nakasabot ko unsa ilang gibati (I understand how they feel),” Cris Tony Monzon, 18-year-old son of murdered activist leader Ludenio Monzon said when he saw the families of the victims of the Ampatuan massacre. Now a member of the group Hustisya (Justice),...

‘We have prevailed despite Arroyo’s ... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today MARIHATAG, SURIGAO DEL SUR – This coastal town in northeastern Mindanao would have been as humdrum and sleepy as any ordinary day but the red letters on the railing of a bridge along the national highway broke the monotony: “Mabuhay ang ika-41 nga anibersaryo sa...

Moro groups fear whitewash in the Maguin... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY– After the mass murder that killed 57 people, 21 of them women, Moro residents in Ampatuan town in Maguindanao have remained largely silent, perhaps dumbfounded, at the extent of the atrocities. “But it does not mean that they wanted these things to...

12 journalists, several others killed in... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY—Election violence erupted this early right at the heart of Maguindanao, a province long wrought by political killings. Forty persons including lawyers and journalists on their way to Maguindanao’s capital town of Shariff Aguak were reportedly taken by armed men...

CenPEG foresees problems in automated po... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today As voting will be automated for the first time in 2010, the public policy watchdog Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) foresees the elections as a more difficult process than an easier one. “A lot of things that will be happening will be invisible to the...

The trial of Rodrigo Duterte... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY (davaotoday.com)–Towards the end of March this year, at the start of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) public hearing on extrajudicial killings in Davao City, CHR chairperson Leila De Lima read this part of an excerpt from the davaotoday interview with...

Government’s counterinsurgency cam... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY (davaotoday.com)– The image of a soldier shooting a villager clambering upon the back of an open truck is still fresh in the minds of the Manobos when they left their homes in Barangay Diatagon in Lianga, Surigao del Sur in July this year. Though it happened...

Coming Home... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today After one month and 13 days at the evacuation camp, the Manobo evacuees finally went home to Lianga on August 30. Aboard a convoy of 40 trucks to barangay Diatagon, the lumads left the grounds of the Diocese of Tandag that served as their evacuation camp. But barely a month...

Soldiers hold a fact finding team for th... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY– Soldiers held for three hours yesterday a fact finding team in a remote village in Talaingod, a town 89 kilometers from Davao City. Twenty members of lumad support groups, including a Davao Today reporter, went inside Talaingod�s sitio Dulyan in barangay...

Lumad farmer survives slay attempt... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – - A lumad farmer survived a slay attempt in Baganga town of Davao Oriental on June 26 this year. Julius Gonzales, 37, was going home with his wife to their village in Lambajon in Baganga when motorcycle-riding men, he recognized as Cafgu member, fired at...

Postscript to Cory... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY (davaotoday.com) � Yellow ribbons hung in tricycles, jeepneys and private cars; gigantic yellow cloths rolled out in schools, malls and buildings on the day that former President Corazon Aquino was buried. While members of the Davao�s Yellow Friday Movement brought...

Top military officers a no-show at the a... By CHERYLL D. FIEL Davao Today Lawyer Carlos Isagani, one of the three Davao lawyers, who filed a writ of amparo against the military for including their names in the Order of Battle list. Military officers fail to appear on the first hearing.(davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan) DAVAO CITY —...

Activist doctor shot dead in Davao... By CHERYLL FIEL Davao Today DAVAO CITY – - -A doctor of the regional health office who headed the epidemiological research and surveillance department, the unit tasked to monitor and address the A (H1N1) flu cases, was shot dead in his car while going home last night. Dr. Rogelio �Bong� Pe�era, 46, was...