Author: INQUIRER.net

BRASILIA — Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, detained after allegedly using a soldering iron on his court-ordered ankle monitor, argued Sunday that a state of “paranoia” had led him to tamper with the device.

The 70-year-old was taken to prison on Saturday from his home, where he had been under house arrest while appealing a coup-plotting conviction, after the Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk.

The court sentenced Bolsonaro in September to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections.

READ: Brazil’s ex-president Bolsonaro arrested over alleged plot to escape

The far-right firebrand has denied any wrongdoing and though he has already lost one appeal, he has until Monday for another challenge of his conviction.

During a hearing on Sunday in Brasilia, Bolsonaro stated he “experienced a certain paranoia between Friday and Saturday due to medication,” according to a Supreme Court document obtained by AFP.

He also asserted “that he had no intention of fleeing and that there was no breakage of the bracelet’s strap.”

The former army captain further said he spent a good part of Friday afternoon trying to open the bracelet until he “came to his senses” around midnight and stopped.

READ: Brazil’s Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years for coup attempt

In a video made public by the court on Saturday, Bolsonaro admitted that he had used a soldering iron on the monitoring bracelet out of “curiosity.”

The video showed the device badly damaged and burned, but still on his ankle.

The court upheld the preventive arrest warrant against Bolsonaro.

‘Sovereign country’

Later, his lawyers asked the court to reconsider the measure and return Bolsonaro to “humanitarian house arrest” due to his “state of mental confusion.”

The former president is experiencing “side effects from the various medications prescribed to him, beginning to have persecutory thoughts and becoming detached from reality,” they said in a letter to the Supreme Court.

The medications he takes to relieve the “hiccup attacks” that have afflicted him for months are to blame for his condition, they added.

In its ruling on Saturday that sent Bolsonaro into custody, the Supreme Court noted that the US embassy is located near his residence.

The former leader is a close ally of US President Donald Trump, who has denounced the trial as a “witch hunt” and sanctioned a supreme court judge and his family.

Trump had also imposed punitive tariffs on Brazil over the case, but has since largely walked them back.

On Sunday, Lula was asked about the possibility that the new arrest of Bolsonaro could affect relations with Washington.

“It has nothing to do with it,” Lula said during a press conference at the G20 summit in Johannesburg.

“I think Trump needs to know that we are a sovereign country, that our justice system decides, and what is decided here is decided,” he said.

Bolsonaro was convicted in September of leading a criminal organization that conspired to ensure his “authoritarian hold on power.”

The plot allegedly involved a plan to assassinate Lula, his vice president Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes.

Bolsonaro’s legal woes have left Brazil’s large conservative electorate without a champion heading into 2026 presidential elections, in which Lula, 80, has said he will seek a fourth term.

The Bolsonaro defense team said they would appeal his detention, arguing it “could put his life at risk” due to his frail health.

He suffers from recurring abdominal issues after being stabbed during the 2018 campaign, which has required several follow-up surgeries, as well as the recurring hiccups problem.

On Sunday, he received his first visitors in prison: two lawyers, his doctor and his wife Michelle. /dl

WASHINGTON — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani didn’t back down in an interview that aired Sunday from past criticism that President Donald Trump acted like a despot and a fascist after a surprisingly friendly White House meeting between the two men.

The newly elected democratic socialist and the Republican president have fiercely criticized each other in the past. Trump called Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” in a social media post following the incoming mayor’s election victory, and Mamdani has said Trump was attacking democracy. Yet the two political foils emerged smiling after the meeting Friday and spoke of shared goals.

Pressed about his past criticism during a “Meet the Press” interview conducted Saturday, Mamdani said his views remained unchanged.

“Everything that I’ve said in the past, I continue to believe,” Mamdani said. “And that’s the thing that I think is important in our politics, is that we don’t shy away from where we have disagreements, but we understand what it is that brings us to that table, because I’m not coming into the Oval Office to make a point or make a stand. I’m coming in there to deliver for New Yorkers.”

Trump had brushed aside Mamdani’s criticisms Friday and even jumped in on his defense several times. When a reporter asked if Mamdani stood by his comments that Trump is a fascist, Trump interjected before Mamdani could fully answer the question.

“That’s OK. You can just say yes. OK?” Trump said. “It’s easier. It’s easier than explaining it. I don’t mind.”

Asked about the fascist criticism on “Meet the Press,” Mamdani said, “That’s something that I’ve said in the past. I say it today. ”

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” talk show that Trump wants to work with everybody who cares about the future of the American people.

“We’re at times disagreeing about policies,” Hassett said, “but I think that the objective of making life better for everybody is something that a lot of people share on the Democratic and Republican side.”

Though far apart politically, the White House meeting offered potential political benefits for both men. The incoming mayor was able to meet one-on-one with the president, and Trump got to to talk about affordability, an issue that is increasingly important to voters.

Local law enforcers are tracking down five of the 18 accused individuals in an alleged flood control anomaly in Mindoro after the police serving arrest warrants failed to find them at their known addresses.

They are all implicated in a substandard P289.5-million road dike project in Naujan, Oriental Mindoro, together with former Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy Co, founder of Sunwest Corp., the company that bagged the public works contract.

The Quezon City Police District (QCPD) on Sunday reported that despite visiting all registered addresses of four of the accused, its operatives failed to serve the warrants because “none of the subjects were present during the attempts.”

The four are Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Region IV-B construction division chief Dominic Gregorio Serrano, bids and awards committee accountant IV Lerma Dotado Cayco, material engineer Timojen Adiong Sacar, and Sunwest board member Anthony Ngo.

A fifth accused, former DPWH Region IV-B assistant regional director and now DPWH Bureau of Maintenance director Gene Ryan Alurin Altea, was also missing after Albay police failed to serve an arrest warrant on him last Saturday.

Whereabouts unknown

The warrants were issued on Nov. 21 by three divisions of the Sandiganbayan, where the Office of the Ombudsman filed on Nov. 18 two counts of graft and one count of malversation through falsification regarding the Mindoro project.

According to the QCPD, its officers attempted to serve a warrant to Ngo on the evening of Nov. 21, but the caretaker at his listed residence stated that “the accused no longer resides at the address, and his whereabouts could not be determined.”

The following day, in a follow-up operation, police checked for Ngo at the Rolling Hills Subdivision, where his family said “they have had no communication with him since the issuance of the warrant and requested that further inquiries be directed through their legal counsel.”

On the same day, the police also visited the residences of Cayco, Sacar and Serrano.

Cayco’s relatives at a condominium in South Triangle told operatives that Cayco was “on leave and not at the premises,” the QCPD reported.

Meanwhile, security personnel at the two residences of Sacar confirmed that “he could not be located,” and his Pinyahan residence had already been vacant since August.

Serrano was also not found by police, and his neighbors claimed he was last seen “approximately two weeks before the issuance of the warrant.”

The QCPD vowed to intensify its follow-up operations, “including sustained district-wide manhunt efforts,” together with national agencies such as the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime-International Police, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

Meanwhile, the Daraga, Albay police went to Altea’s residence at around 3:56 p.m. on Saturday but he was nowhere to be found.

According to the Daraga police, his family said “they have no knowledge about his current whereabouts.”

Departures

The Bureau of Immigration (BI) on Sunday said it has ordered all immigration officers nationwide to be on heightened alert following the issuance of arrest warrants on Co and 17 others.

According to a statement by BI Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado, all individuals covered by the warrants have since been encoded into its centralized “derogatory database” to ensure that front-line officers can immediately flag, verify and respond should any of them attempt to depart from or enter the Philippines.

“Once intercepted, our officers are under strict instruction to promptly coordinate with the Philippine National Police for the proper and lawful execution of the warrants,” Viado said.

Meanwhile, Viado said that based on BI travel records, four of the individuals on the list are currently abroad.

Co departed for Singapore on Aug. 6; DPWH officer in charge/planning and design division chief Montrexis Tamayo left for Qatar on Nov. 15; Sunwest president and chair Aderma Angelie Alcazar traveled to Australia on Oct. 2; while Sunwest treasurer Cesar Buenaventura departed for the United Arab Emirates on the same day.

Viado said the BI remains fully aligned with law enforcement agencies to ensure that the warrants are executed once these individuals present themselves at the country’s ports.

Last Friday, Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla said Co and the other accused have until Monday, Nov. 24, to surrender to law enforcement agencies. INQ

Even Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson was approached by some retired military officers to be part of a “civilian-military junta” that will replace President Marcos amid the flood control corruption scandal, but the senator said on Sunday that he rebuffed them.

“There were those inciting and want a civil-military junta. Some retired military officers have reached out to me, I won’t mention names, I was ignoring them,’’ said Lacson, who has an ongoing inquiry into allegations linking lawmakers, public works officials and private contractors to anomalous flood control projects as chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee.

“Some even offered that I be part of the ‘junta,’ of the ‘council.’ But I did not entertain them,” he added in an interview over dzBB.

Lacson said he could not entirely blame the retired officers for floating the idea of a junta “perhaps in their passion to change the system because they saw how systemic corruption has become.”

‘Vested interests’

Even so, the senator told proponents of unconstitutional proposals such as the setting up of “transition council” and a military-backed “reset” to “dream on.”

Malacañang welcomed Lacson’s rejection of the plan to replace the President with a junta or a transition council, and agreed that this violates the Constitution.

“The people behind this so-called ‘transition council’ have only one goal—to remove Pres. Marcos, Jr. not for the country, not for the Filipinos, but for their own vested interests,” Palace press officer Claire Castro told the Inquirer.

Earlier this month, Malacañang said the government’s intelligence agencies were verifying reports if the Duterte family, among others, was behind retired military officials’ call for a withdrawal of support for the Commander in Chief.

Since it broke in September, the corruption scandal has set off a series of mass protests involving the Catholic clergy, university students and members of a religious sect, and fueled talk of destabilization against the government.

In a news forum on Oct. 3, Armed Forces chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. confirmed that some retired officers and active younger officers reached out to him during the Sept. 21 anticorruption protests calling for the military to intervene.

Active military officers rejected their calls, which included mounting a “coup d’etat in order to come up with a reset of the Philippine society, or a withdrawal of support for the Commander in Chief, Brawner said.

‘Rise above noise’

In Baguio City, Brawner advised cadets of the Philippine Military Academy to “rise above the noise” during the recognition rites of the academy’s 333 new freshmen cadets of Class Madasilak of 2029 on Saturday.

“Do not allow yourself to be misled by shallow commentary or to be provoked by divisive commentary,” Brawner said in a speech.

Instead, cadets must “think critically, speak with restraint, act with prudence—and above all, seek the truth,” the AFP chief said. —With reports from Dexter Cabalza and Vincent Cabreza INQ

While Filipinos were glued to developments in the massive flood-control scandal, two senators are drawing the public’s attention to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), an agency that has long been tagged for corruption.

If the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has flood control projects that its personnel use to steal taxpayer money, Sen. Erwin Tulfo says the BIR has the Letters of Authority (LOA) that its unscrupulous employees employ to do the same.

During the Senate plenary deliberations on the proposed 2026 national budget last week, Senate Deputy Majority Leader JV Ejercito also sounded the alarm over the “weaponization” of LOAs, warning that their use as a tool for corruption is scaring off investors and undermining confidence in the country’s tax system.

Ejercito detailed some disturbing cases he has heard, including the issuance of LOAs covering taxable years already settled and fully paid; LOAs that lump multiple taxable years, and a tax assessment of P100 million reduced to P75 million after a “settlement,” with instructions to “fix the receipt.”

Tulfo, for his part, noted that he has many friends in the business community who complained to him about the scheme. “They’re even going after the small ones … single-proprietorship businesses—they target them and issue a LOA,” Tulfo lamented.

Tax-audit power

“Of course, they don’t want the hassle, so they’d rather just settle. Because even if they’ve paid everything completely and have receipts for all of it, some BIR inspectors—the examiners—will keep looking for faults. Sometimes they even backtrack five to six years. Where are they supposed to find those documents?” he said in Filipino.

This abuse of the LOAs is not a recent development. Just like the corruption in DPWH projects, this appalling BIR scheme has been going on for decades as well. Commissioners of the tax agency come and go, but the individuals below them who use this tax-audit power to force companies and other entrepreneurs to cough up money remain.

The excessive use of LOAs by BIR personnel has raised serious concerns among domestic and foreign investors, according to Ejercito, citing his discussions with the European Union ambassador and the American and European chambers of commerce. Ejercito added that the Philippines’ already low ranking in foreign direct investment attractiveness is further affected by these practices, which create “deterrents” for investors who seek stability and fairness in tax enforcement.

Second most corrupt agency

Newly appointed BIR Commissioner Charlito Martin Mendoza, who was plucked out of the Department of Finance where he is serving as undersecretary to replace Romeo Lumagui Jr., has stated his urgent and nonnegotiable priority is to maximize revenues and close the gap between actual collections and the revenue target. He also plans to sustain and expand efforts to advance digitalization and streamline processes to make taxation more client-focused and transparent.

However, we believe Mendoza’s mission should include addressing immediately the problem on LOAs. As Tulfo noted during the Senate budget deliberations, Mendoza really needs to do something about his own subordinates who are using those LOAs to make money. “If you’re going to take action [about LOA abuse], you need to reform that agency. Because right now, it seems like it’s the second most corrupt agency after the [DPWH]—that’s the BIR.” Ejercito likewise urged Mendoza to move swiftly to “clean house” and install safeguards to prevent LOA misuse.

One measure is to set up a hotline for complaints against the abuse of LOAs similar to the “Sumbong sa Pangulo” website launched by President Marcos to receive exclusively the public’s complaints against DPWH corruption.

Smuggling and illicit trade

It should be separate from the BIR’s existing online eComplaint system which handles all types of problems the people experience in dealing with the BIR. The hotline must be dedicated solely for tax-audit issues and be handled directly by Mendoza’s office.

The business community believes Mendoza, who was appointed by the President last Nov. 13, is well equipped to address this problem. As undersecretary at the DOF, he had been supervising both the BIR and the Bureau of Customs. A key part of his role was leading the campaign that sought to curb smuggling and illicit trade through digitalization. The initiative helped the DOF exceed its revenue target in 2024, reaching a 27-year high of P4.42 trillion.

In his message to the BIR employees upon assuming the post, Mendoza reminded the men and women of the BIR to conduct their duties with integrity and transparency in order to foster trust and compliance in the tax system. “When people walk into our offices and experience clarity, courtesy, and consistency, their trust in us grows. And when trust grows, compliance follows naturally. This is how we change the narrative, not through slogans, but through service.” Addressing the LOA problem now will go a long way in achieving this goal.