Philippine News Digest 70
February 29 - March 05, 2004
Contents:
Women's
group blows whistle against violence
Supreme
Court suspends execution of two prisoners
Survey
says corruption in the Philippines worse
Women's
group blows whistle against violence
In observance of International Women's Day March 8, the women's rights
group Gabriela in cooperation with advertising firm Ace Saatchi and
Saatchi lanched the Blow-A-Whistle Campaign to break the “culture of
silence” about domestic violence through heightened public awareness.
“The growing incidence of violence compels all of us to take action. . .
blow our whistles,” said Gabriela president Liza Maza. According to data
gathered by Gabriela from the Philippine National Police, three women and
nine children were raped in the country every day from January to
September 2003. During the same period, 12 women and five children were
battered daily. These figures reflect only cases of those who dared to
speak up about their plight. Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer, 29 February 2004.
Supreme
Court suspends execution of two prisoners
The Supreme Court suspended the executions of Roberto Lara and Roderick
Licayan last February 19 and granted them a re-trial after non-government
organizations and the European Union campaigned against the death penalty.
The two men were due to be the first prisoners to be executed since
President Arroyo lifted a moratorium on executions in December 2003, a
move perceived by many as courting big business into supporting the bid of
the president for a full six-year term. The death penalty was reintroduced
in the Philippines in 1993 for a wide range of crimes such as kidnapping,
rape, murder, bribery and drugs offences. Between 1999 and 2000, seven
people were executed by lethal injection.
Survey
says corruption in the Philippines worse
The result of the latest survey of foreign business executives by the Hong
Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) revealed that
the problem of corruption in the Philippines is seen to have intensified
in the past year. In the survey, Singapore emerged the least corrupt with
a score of 0.5 and Indonesia the worst with 9.25. The Philippines scored
8.33 to place ninth in a field of 12 countries. The scores were gathered
by asking 1,000 businessmen and women in the region to rate corruption in
their host countries using a scale with zero as the best possible grade
and 10 the worst. Source:
Agence France Report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 5 March 2004.
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