Category: Philippines Daily Inquirer

Alex Eala advanced to the Round of 16 of the Hong Kong Open after Katie Boulter of the United Kingdom retired due to injury midway through the second set, 6-4, 2-1, on Tuesday evening.

The Filipino tennis ace broke her string of early exits in recent Women’s Tennis Association tournaments but wished Boulter well after their match ended prematurely when she led the second set, 2-1. ‘I’m a little out of words. I think this time of the year is a tough moment for a lot of players physically and mentally, being the end of the season,’ said Eala. ‘I hope that Katie can take this time to recover and just look back at her season proudly.’ The 20-year-old Eala broke a 4-4 tie in the first set, dominating the ninth game and sealing the opener in an extended 10th game. Currently ranked No. 51 in the world, Eala took down a three-time WTA Tour champion who once reached a career-high ranking of No. 29. Eala will face Canada’s Victoria Mboko in the Round of 16 on Thursday. Mboko earlier defeated Talia Gibson, 6(2)-7, 6-1, 6-4.

The Rafa Nadal Academy graduate recently suffered frustrating exits in the Wuhan Open qualifiers and the early rounds of the Japan Women’s Open and Guangzhou Open.

Eala, who made headlines with a dream semifinal run at the Miami Open and claimed her first WTA title at the Guadalajara 125 Open, hopes to finish her season strong in Hong Kong.

On Monday, Eala and partner Hao-Ching Chan of Chinese Taipei were eliminated from the doubles draw after bowing to Kamilla Rakhimova of Russia and Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus, 6-3, 1-6, 7-10.

The parent firm of popular e-wallet GCash has received the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its stock split transaction – seen to be a prelude to a stock market debut.

In a regulatory filing on Tuesday, Ayala-led Globe Telecom Inc. said the number of common shares of Globe Fintech Innovations Inc., or Mynt, was raised to 71.66 billion from 2.15 billion previously.

Its authorized capital stock remains at P2.15 billion, as the par value was cut to P0.03 per share from P1.

Analysts see this transaction as a way to increase interest in GCash’s much-anticipated stock market debut, which has yet to be finalized, since the split would make its shares more affordable for investors.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has directed the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to freeze until the end of the year the prices of basic goods, as the peak of the Christmas season nears.

Malacañang press officer Claire Castro made the announcement on Monday at the sidelines of the 47th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit in Kuala Lumpur.

‘Before departing for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Saturday, Marcos ordered the DTI to ensure strict monitoring and implementation of the maximum suggested retail prices, particularly for imported rice and other food products,’ she said.

The price freeze also applies to canned sardines, canned meats, all kinds of milk, various products of instant coffee, bottled water, instant noodles, bread, salt, soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, candles, and other manufactured basic commodities.

The president also directed the agency to coordinate with manufacturers in helping maintain current prices of basic goods and prevent unnecessary price hikes during the holidays.

‘According to DTI Secretary Cristina Roque, all stakeholders have cooperated with the government to ensure that no price increases will occur in markets, especially with the upcoming holiday season,’ Castro said.

‘Undas’ monitoring

Before Marcos’ order, Roque had already said on Friday, ‘There will be no price increase for basic necessities and prime commodities until the end of the year.’

She said industry players are cooperating ‘to give the consumers the price[s] that they deserve.’

‘This is good news because everybody is working together to be able to give the best prices for the consumers,’ she told reporters during the agency’s price and supply monitoring of flowers and candles in Manila, ahead of ‘Undas’ or annual visits to cemeteries during All Saints’ Day, when these products are sold at exorbitant prices.

Voluntary

The DTI last updated the suggested retail price (SRP) bulletin on basic necessities and prime commodities in February, which showed that 77 out of a total of 191 commodities had varying price increases.

According to the Price Act (Republic Act No. 7581), agencies such as the DTI are mandated to issue SRPs to guide consumers as well as producers, manufacturers, traders, dealers, sellers, and retailers. They are not, however, required to adhere to the SRP since these are voluntary in nature.

Factors that DTI takes into consideration in imposing price ceilings include the average prices of basic goods in the last three months before the new SRPs are set and the available supply of these goods.

‘If the prevailing price of any basic necessity is excessive or unreasonable, the implementing agency may recommend to the president the imposition of a price ceiling for the sale of the basic necessity at a price other than its prevailing price,’ the law states.

Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson maintains that the Senate has no jurisdiction over the ethics complaint filed against Sen. Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero and a similar case that may be lodged against another colleague.

Lawyer Marvin Aceron filed the complaint against Escudero early this month. It stems from the P30 million campaign contribution he allegedly received from a contractor friend during the May 2022 elections.

Lacson raised the possibility that the Office of the Ombudsman may recommend a similar complaint against Sen. Joel Villanueva regarding his alleged involvement in the pork barrel scam when he was representative of the Cibac party-list.

However, he noted that the alleged offenses committed by Escudero and Villanueva happened before their election to the Senate.

‘The jurisdiction of the Senate committee on ethics does not cover offenses allegedly committed by the members of the Senate before being elected as senators,’ Lacson explained in a Viber message on Tuesday.

‘Both Sens. Escudero and Villanueva were not sitting senators when the alleged violations were committed. Hence, they may raise a jurisdictional issue at the proper time, unless the said rule has been amended,’ he added.

He also said he could attest to this rule in the Senate, as he was also slapped with an ethics case during his first term as senator in 2001.

At that time, Lacson said he ‘was subjected to all forms of harassment, including fabricated and fictitious bank accounts, illegal drugs, and other trumped-up charges’ while he was still police chief.

‘When we read the rules, we discovered such a provision, which I invoked, and thereafter, the ethics complaint was dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction,’ he explained.

Lacson first talked about the matter when asked in OnePH’s interview on Monday about the aborted plan of the Office of the Ombudsman to seek Villanueva’s dismissal.

In the interview, Lacson explained that members of Congress are not covered by the Ombudsman’s suspension or dismissal orders.

If at all, Lacson said, the Ombudsman may recommend to Congress to initiate an ethics case against its member.

‘But then again, in the case of Senator Villanueva, we also have rules in our Senate ethics committee stating that its jurisdiction only covers offenses allegedly committed while we are serving as senators,’ he said.

Lacson said the same is true in the case of Escudero, who was still governor of Sorsogon when he accepted the campaign donation from a private contractor.

The filing of criminal cases against erring members of Congress, however, is a different matter, he also stressed.

Senate President Pro Tempore Ping Lacson underwent an eye surgery while the Senate is on its break.

In a text message to the Inquirer on Tuesday, Lacson shared that the eye surgery was for a cornea transplant.

A cornea transplant is most often used to restore vision to a person with a damaged cornea. A cornea transplant also can relieve pain or other symptoms associated with cornea diseases.

According to Lacson, the surgery was conducted on October 14.

‘[I’m] still healing. Sutures and all,’ he said.

The Senate, meanwhile, will resume its sessions on November 10.

Lacson earlier said the Senate panel on blue ribbon’s inquiry into anomalies surrounding government infrastructure projects will resume on November 14 if he is reelected as its chair.

A Manila court has found the sworn statement of Senate witness Orly Guteza falsified, absolving notary public Petchie Rose Espera of any liability in the document’s notarization.

In an 11-page order dated Oct. 24, Executive Judge Carolina Iscasiano-Sison of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 18 said Espera appeared to be a ‘victim’ of the falsification incident, as her signature and notarial details had been forged.

One of the bases for the executive judge’s ruling was a National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) forensic analysis, which showed that the signature in Guteza’s sworn statement, compared with Espera’s standard signature, ‘were not written by one and the same person.’

Guteza appeared before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee in September, claiming that he delivered suitcases of cash to the homes of former lawmaker Zaldy Co and Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez.

His sworn statement was supposedly notarized by Espera, who later denied doing so.

The lawyer filed an incident report with the Manila court, which then initiated proceedings to investigate the matter.

In her report, Espera categorically denied notarizing or signing the document, saying that the notarial signature and seal attributed to her were falsified and unauthorized.

Guteza, meanwhile, did not appear during the court proceedings.

The court then asked the NBI to examine the specimen signature in Guteza’s sworn statement and compare it with Espera’s actual signature on her notarial records and other official documents.

On Oct. 10, the NBI transmitted its report to the court, finding differences in the size and proportion, writing slant, letter forms, pen pressure, and manner of execution of line strokes.

After reviewing the incident report, the document submitted by Espera, and the findings of the NBI report, the Manila RTC concluded that the lawyer had no part in the notarization of Guteza’s statement.

The court said there was ‘no indication of any lapse in Espera’s notarial practice that could have led to the purported notarization of the sinumpaang salaysay [sworn affidavit].’

‘Hence, Atty. Espera is hereby cleared of any liability arising from the notarization of the subject sinumpaang salaysay,’ it said.

The court, however, found that Guteza and all those who made use of the document ‘not only introduced the forged and notarized Sinumpaang Salaysay, but also actively participated in its falsification.’

‘Similarly, all other persons who made use of or uttered the Sinumpaang Salaysay signed by Mr. Guteza shall be liable for falsification, noting that ‘in the absence of a satisfactory explanation, one who is found in possession of a forged document and who used or uttered it is presumed to be the forger,” the Manila RTC said.

It added that the falsification incident was referred to the Department of Justice for further investigation and the filing of appropriate charges against Guteza and other individuals who used or presented the sworn statement.

The Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT-3) will be on heightened security alert from October 30 to November 4 in light of the upcoming Undas.

‘MRT-3 will raise its security to heightened alert from October 30 to November 4 to ensure passengers’ safety during the upcoming Undas,’ the Department of Transportation (DOTr) said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

In anticipation of the expected surge in passengers during these dates, additional security and station personnel will be deployed to guide and assist commuters, the DOTr said.

The agency added that it is planning to establish police assistance desks at train stations in coordination with the Philippine National Police.

It also assured that sufficient four-car and three-car trains will be deployed during the Undas weekend.

Meanwhile, the Light Rail Transit Line 2 (LRT-2) is also on alert despite an expected decrease in passengers, LRT Authority Administrator Atty. Hernando Cabrera told the Inquirer.

Cabrera said they are expecting ‘low ridership’ because there are no classes during Undas and no cemeteries near LRT-2 stations.

Filipinos who have traveled to Japan or Singapore often return with the same bewildered admiration. A wallet left behind on a train is returned hours later. A public toilet remains clean without supervision. A passerby will pause to help a stranger cross the street without expecting a reward or recording it for social media. It is not prosperity that impresses us most; it is civic maturity-the quiet discipline of citizens who act as if the public realm is their personal responsibility. And deep inside, many Filipinos quietly ask: Bakit hindi natin kaya ito?

We envy it because we recognize it. Filipinos know what disciplined care looks like-because we have produced it. Not just in moments of disaster, when volunteerism explodes, but in individuals who have made tenderness a long-term civic discipline rather than a burst of moral emotion.

Consider Fr. Ben Nebres, SJ, former president of Ateneo de Manila University. Instead of treating poverty as a problem of scarcity, he saw it as a crisis of abandonment-of children growing up invisible to the nation. In Payatas and nearby communities, he did not merely run feeding programs. He stayed with families for years, pairing daily nutrition with reading circles, parent accompaniment, and confidence-building-not relief, but formation. Not charity, but citizenship cultivation.

Or Efren Peñaflorida, who pushed the kariton classroom every weekend for over two decades, long after the cameras left. There were no grand pronouncements. No funding windfall. Just a stubborn refusal to accept that slum children must wait for the system to remember them.

And in 2021, Patricia Non quietly placed a bamboo table on Maginhawa Street with the handwritten sign: ‘Magbigay ayon sa kakayahan, kumuha ayon sa pangangailangan.’ No NGO, no press kit. Yet in under three weeks, over 6,000 volunteer-run pantries emerged across the Philippines-before any government directive. That was not mere charity. It was the collective conscience reawakened.

These individuals were not extraordinary because of scale but because of consistency-a trait often mistaken here for sainthood, when in other countries it is simply called citizenship.

The truth is that what we admire abroad-from Japan’s spotless stations to Singapore’s instinctive queue discipline-is not the product of fear or surveillance, but of sustained cultural reinforcement. Urban planners now speak of the 15-minute city, mixed-income neighborhoods, and ‘eyes on the street’-concepts built on a simple premise: when public space is human-scaled and walkable, when people regularly see one another, they begin to notice again. Safety is not enforced-it is practiced together.

And yet, in the Philippines, our systems train the opposite reflex. We engineer invisibility. Gated subdivisions turn neighbors into abstractions. Malls replace plazas. Barangay halls become sites of transaction rather than accompaniment. It becomes possible-even normal-to live in a place and know nothing about those suffering just meters away.

But our problem is not the lack of moral instinct-it is the erosion of moral stamina. As a people, we do not lack the will to care but the infrastructure-cultural and urban-that helps us sustain that care beyond moments of adrenaline.

What if we began to design society around the principle that the opposite of corruption is not law but attention? That the antidote to civic decay is not merely outrage but radical tenderness-the disciplined refusal to look away, especially from those the system makes easy to ignore?

In Singapore, there is a deeply embedded norm called kiasu-fear of being the one who fails the collective. In Japan, the concept of omoiyari-sensitive awareness of others-is taught from preschool. These are not just values. They are civic operating systems.

We have our equivalents-malasakit, pakikiramay, bayanihan-but we have not protected them from exhaustion or repetition fatigue. We deploy them only in calamity, instead of embedding them as a daily reflex.

Perhaps the first civic reform we need is not a new law or agency but a recommitment to this question: ‘How do we design a society in which it becomes difficult to be indifferent?’

The champions we remember-Nebres, Peñaflorida, Non-are not exceptions to Filipino nature. They are evidence of what remains possible. What we admire abroad is not foreign to us. We have simply failed to protect it from dispersion.

It is not too late to rebuild a culture where discipline is not obedience to power but fidelity to one another.

Starting December, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) will begin its call for funding requests to countries seeking financial support due to the impacts of climate change.

But pledges from 28 countries to the funding program managed by the World Bank are still lacking at the current total of $768 million (P45.12 trillion).

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said the amount still ‘falls far short of the vast and growing needs on the ground.’

‘The success of FRLD interventions is inherently linked to the availability of resources,’ the DENR said, adding that the call for funding requests will remain open for six months.

‘Developing countries wishing to access the fund directly or in partnership with access entities are invited to engage with the FRLD Secretariat as they are coordinating the preparation of their funding requests,’ the DENR said.

Initial allocation

The DENR’s announcement followed after the FRLD board approved the Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM)-a framework governing the provision of grants, with its initial allocation amounting to $250 million (P14.69 trillion).

BIM was launched during a meeting in Manila by the FRLD board from Oct. 7 to 9. The Philippines is the board’s current host, assuming the responsibility in July last year.

The DENR said the grants range from $5 million to $20 million (P293 million to P1.18 trillion) for each climate-related intervention.

‘The launch of the BIM is a testament to our commitment to start providing support to vulnerable developing nations,’ FRLD executive director Ibrahima Cheikh Diong said in a briefing on Oct. 10.

‘We will continue to refine this funding mechanism, shaping how the FRLD will deliver support to communities grappling with the irreversible impacts of climate change in the future,’ he said.

‘Momentum’

FRLD was established by the COP (Conference of Parties) 27 in 2022 to tackle the growing needs of vulnerable communities in developing countries that have been adversely affected by the ‘irreversible’ impacts of climate change.

The fund aims to finance recovery initiatives while ensuring that these interventions are aligned with a particular country’s needs and priorities.

The DENR said the need for the fund ‘has never been more urgent,’ with the board’s meeting occurring at a ‘critical time’ given the ‘worsening climate crisis that is heightening vulnerabilities.’

Diong said the work of the FRLD board ‘is just beginning,’ adding that ‘the initial pledges are a good start, but we must now build upon this momentum.’

In his welcome message during the board meeting, Environment Secretary Raphael Lotilla said the FRLD was ‘only a fraction’ of the estimated climate loss and damage of around $200 to $400 billion worldwide by 2030, only five years away.

By 2027, the FRLD board will initiate its first replenishment process to address this ‘critical gap’ in funding, said the DENR-with preparations for a resource mobilization strategy also expected to begin.

Our task is to develop and refine a strategy based on the Board’s feedback and develop a concrete action plan to secure the substantial and additional funding required to fulfill our mandate,’ Diong said.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) on Tuesday refuted circulating social media posts claiming that a super typhoon may hit the country between Nov. 5 and 7.

Pagasa said that while official forecasts for potential cyclone activity in the next two weeks show that there is ‘medium chance’ of a westward-moving tropical cyclone developing outside the Philippine area of responsibility from Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, and may then cross the central parts of the country, it is still ‘highly uncertain.’ ‘We would like to emphasize that since this forecast is still within the two-week range, there remains a high uncertainty in the specific details of the forecast, particularly regarding the exact path and intensity of the potential tropical cyclone,’ Pagasa said in a statement.

Pagasa warned against false unverified information regarding weather forecasts, particularly those involving supposed typhoons.

‘The public is strongly advised to regularly monitor for official updates and advisories issued by Pagasa and refrain from using unverified information from unofficial sources, especially for purposes of disaster early preparedness activities,’ said Pagasa.