Saturday, September 23, 2017

Duterte Says He Became Local Millionaire Due to Inheritance - Associated Press


Duterte Says He Became Local Millionaire Due to Inheritance
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 23, 2017, 7:35 PM GMT+10 September 23, 2017, 8:28 PM GMT+10
Davao, Philippines (AP) -- The Philippine president says he became a local millionaire at a young age due to inheritance and reiterated he has no unexplained wealth as alleged by his leading critic, who questioned his claim that he was born into an impoverished family.
President Rodrigo Duterte gave some details of his personal assets at a dinner with journalists Friday in his southern home city of Davao, repeating a pledge to immediately resign if anybody can prove that he has questionable wealth concealed in bank accounts.
Duterte said his parents owned land in Davao where a profitable ice plant stood, and that he and his siblings divided the family assets after his father, a former Davao provincial governor, died in 1968. Duterte mentioned without elaborating that his family then was also involved in logging.
He said he suggested that the inherited landholdings be sold due to squabbling among the Duterte siblings.
"When we divided, we had our first millions already," Duterte said. "Long ago, I was just a student, fourth year. I already had about 3 million (pesos, or $59,000)."
Duterte mentioned a local bank, now closed, where he said he had cash deposits years ago, adding that his critics could still check the records of that bank. "If you want to really to trace my money, start from there," he said.
All his remaining landholdings are now in the name of his children, Duterte said. He added that he currently has only about 500,000 pesos ($9,800) in the bank, but did not provide other specific details of his other properties. His last public assets declaration put his worth at more than 27 million pesos ($529,000) as of December last year.
Opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV has accused Duterte of concealing more than 2 billion pesos ($39 million) in undeclared bank accounts when he served as a top Davao city official, contradicting, the senator said, the president's claim that he came from an impoverished family. Philippine law requires officials to declare their assets and liabilities each year, and those who fail to do so could face dismissal from office.
In past interviews and speeches, Duterte has said he was born into a poor family but later walked back on those remarks, saying he and his siblings have inherited properties from his father even though they lived a modest life.
Trillanes has repeatedly called on Duterte to sign waivers so investigators could check his allegations that the president had concealed wealth in Philippine banks, some in joint accounts with his daughter, which he said were not publicly declared in the past in violation of the law.
Duterte has denied the allegations. "You show any bank account, foreign, and I will step down tomorrow," the president said.
He repeated an earlier accusation that it was Trillanes who has undeclared foreign bank accounts, mostly joint accounts with Chinese associates, citing information that the president said was given by an unspecified foreign government.
Known for bombastic speeches, Duterte acknowledged earlier in the week in a state TV talk show that at least one of the foreign bank accounts he earlier alleged belonged to Trillanes "was nothing, just a product of my mind." Duterte said he was still in the process of obtaining evidence against the senator, who he called "a liar."


Duterte won the presidency with a wide margin last year on a promise to eradicate crime and corruption. Despite growing alarm against his brutal crackdown against illegal drugs, which has left thousands of suspects dead, Duterte has remained widely popular in a poor country long exasperated by corruption and crime.

You think Donald Trump is bad? You ain't seen nothing yet - Independent

You think Donald Trump is bad? You ain't seen nothing yet
If Roy Moore wins Tuesday's primary in Alabama it will mark the first major repudiation of Trump. But it won't have come from the ‘resistance’ of the liberal left – it will be from the far right
David Usborne New York @dusborne 10 hours ago
Nearly a year after Donald Trump’s victory, both parties in Washington are still trying to figure out what it means and how best to adapt. It’s hard to say who has faced the deeper existential crisis. The Democrats lost pretty much everything; the Republicans gained, well, Trump.
The self-flagellating of the Grand Old Party, GOP, continues as it scratches around for votes for another bowl of old mutton they’re calling a viable replacement for the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Boiled up by Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, two senators from the South, it has been roundly condemned by the healthcare industry as unworkable and cruel to patients. Late on Friday John McCain declared his opposition, probably killing it dead. But still they try. Such is their desperation to be seen capable of passing something. Anything.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Heading to Alabama now, big crowd!
7:18 AM - Sep 23, 2017
The best the Democrats can say these days is that Trump has been giving them day-passes to his latest little club, namely the Oval Office. He even did a deal this month with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, leaders of the opposition in the Senate and House respectively, to find the money to fund the government, leaving Republican leaders twisting in he wind.
In its latest cover, Time examines their plight. “Eight months into the Trump presidency, the party looks to face its toughest odds since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in 1984,” editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal writes. “The Democrats are in their deepest congressional rut since the class of 1946 was elected, and hold the fewest governors' mansions –15 – since 1922. Of the 98 partisan legislatures in the US, Republicans control 67. During Barack Obama's presidency, Democrats lost 970 seats in state legislatures, leaving the party's bench almost bare.”
Donald Trump: We'll deal with 'Little Rocket Man' Kim Jong-un
That’s only part of the litany of woe. He also highlights their stunning youth deficit. Among all those leading the party in Congress or positioning to be its candidate for president next time around, none couldn’t qualify as your great grandparent. No offence, Bernie or Elizabeth.
But here is the real problem for both parties: America doesn’t know what it wants. The pendulum rule of electoral politics suggests that by next year – the congressional midterms – or certainly by the 2020 presidential contest, the country will have swung back to something near the old normal. The moment for "outsider" candidates promising to disrupt the status quo will have passed. Candidates offering experience and expertise – imagine! – will be back in vogue.
A first indicator of this has been the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Trump’s outreach to Chuck and Nancy, which prevented a government shutdown. A new NBC News/WSJ poll finds that 71 per cent of Americans support the agreement which also provided funding for victims of the two recent hurricanes. And there has been uptick, for the first time, in Trump’s approval ratings too.
But then cast your eyes to Alabama where on Tuesday Republicans must decide whether to stick by Luther Strange, a former state attorney general who was appointed on an interim basis earlier this year to hold a vacant US Senate seat, or push him aside in favour of his challenger from within the party, former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore.
Donald Trump doesn't know difference between Melania and Ivanka, says Jimmy Kimmel
Fresh from his railings against North Korea at the UN - and the return railings from Kim Jong-un – Trump flew to Alabama on Friday to campaign for Strange. A risky gambit. Latest polls show Strange, all 6-foot-9 of him, losing to Moore perhaps by a hefty margin. If that is what actually happens, it will mark the first major repudiation of Trump at the polls since he took office. But it will not have come from the "resistance" of the liberal left, but rather from the far right.
Were he to make it all the way to Washington - after defeating Strange he would still face a Democrat opponent on election day - Moore would make Trump look Kennedy-esque (and Ted Cruz a kitten). This the man who in 2005 said “homosexual conduct should be illegal,” and who was suspended from the state Supreme Court last year after he ordered all Alabama judges to ignore the US Supreme Court ruling in favour of gay marriage. It was the second time he’d been booted from the Court. The first was after he installed a stone monument to the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building, in violation of the constitution.
On the trail just in the last few days he has spoken of “reds and yellows” in America – yes he apparently meant native Americans and Asians – and warned that punishment for loose behaviour is nigh. “You think that God’s not angry that this land is a moral slum?” he asked during a visit to a church. “How much longer will it be before his judgment comes?”
Mr Moore is no stranger to controversy (The Hill )
He and his supporters argue that while Trump’s heart may have been in the right place he is falling under the spell of the Washington establishment. Of Chuck and Nancy and also Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the Senate. As Sarah Palin put it, the swamp is “trying to hijack this presidency”. Yes Palin is not with Strange and therefore Trump. She is all out for Moore.
Alabama is not America, that’s for sure. But this is confusing, nonetheless, for all of us and for the leaders of the two parties. Support for Trump’s deal with the Democrats suggests an appetite for less extremism in Washington not more. But a Moore victory in Tuesday’s Republican primary would send an entirely different message: that Trump’s time in the Oval Office is but the beginning of a nationalist and populist wave in America. That it’s barely got started. In other words, for those not exactly enamoured of Trump: you ain’t seen nothing yet.