Rape, Duterte’s bad mouth and soft heart

by | Apr 21, 2016 | Election 2016, Opinion

On bended knees I begged for help, Government and Women groups turned their back (My sister was raped and brutally Killed)

Maria, A mother of 6, a beautiful young mother, was forced to go abroad because of poverty, like other OFWs in the world now.

She went abroad for work, but went home inside a coffin, she was raped and brutally killed in the Middle East on September 29, 1993, the family was informed of three different versions of her death, the government tried to hide to the family the real cause.
The Philippine Embassy informed Maria’s family only on October 4 for reasons the family didn’t know.

Maria from North Cotabato, her family sought the help of the Secretary of the Department of Labor, the Transportation Secretary and even various women groups including, the militant Gabriela in Manila to help them, and at least- facilitate the transfer of her casket from an international airline in Manila to Davao City, but they failed. Worse they were given a run around.

Maria’s youngest sister, then a correspondent of a known national broadsheet called several women’s group in Manila to help as no one in the family was there to attend for the transfer- the family was struggling to raise funds to pay for the casket, they were told the airfare from manila to Davao is expensive that a human fare.

Endless calls made from October 4 to October 20, but the government was INUTILE and none of the so-called women’s groups either progressive, militant or moderate came to the family’s rescue.






On October 19 at exactly, 12:00 midnight, a stranger visited Maria’s sister in her house in Davao, a man who claims to be a staff of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte informed them, that the transfer and payment for the casket was underway and the family need not worry about the payment because Duterte sent a staff to Manila to help the transfer and the payment.

The same staff told the family “Ayaw na mo sige ug hilak, kay ugma sa buntag moabot na ang lawas diri sa Davao (stop crying, tomorrow morning the cadaver will arrive here in Davao).
Seconds, after the man told the sister, someone was calling him over his handheld radio and the staff told the sister, Duterte wants to talk to her.

In between sobs, she talked with Duterte over the radio, heard Duterte said ” ayaw na kagoul, tabangan ta mo, sultihi lang ko ug naay pay kulang kay aron madala imong igsoon sa iyang pamilya sa North Cotabato (don’t worry, I will help your family, just tell me if you need more help to bring the casket to her family in North Cotabato).

Unknown to the family, Duterte was monitoring the arrival of the aircraft the following morning.

When the cadaver was opened inside the funeral homes along F. Torres St. in Davao, family members were disoriented, the youngest sister horrified but a man with open arms comforted her and told her “be strong, Pray. I understand the pain.”

She did not realize, she was heavily crying in Duterte’s arms.

Inside the room, Duterte comforted the family, he cried with them as the family shouted for justice.

When everyone was settled and calm, Duterte stood up and told the family in vernacular “we have a problem here, the Philippines does not have BILATERAL LABOR AGREEMENT WITH MANY COUNTRIES and EVEN IF WE FIGHT NOW, IT WILL BE AN UPHILL FIGHT.”

Duterte even went to North Cotabato on his motorbike a day before Maria was laid to rest.
The family is coming out now, because they now deep inside their heart, BELOW THE BAD MOUTH OF DUTUERTE, LIES DUTERTE’s SOFT HEART—READY TO PROTECT ANYONE SPECIALLY THE DISADVANTAGED AND THE FAMILY OF POOR RAPE VICTIMS.

THIS IS MY STORY, it took me two days to draft this story, because I cannot continue writing-crying as I remember the tragic moment how my sister was brutally killed, and how a stranger-RODRIGO DUTERTE came to our rescue.

It pains me to hear people crucifying Duterte when they themselves have yet to try his kind of leadership, they don’t know Duterte inside out.

I am Editha Zaragosa Caduaya, youngest sister of Maria.

The girl at the right side of the picture.

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Reposted with permission from this Facebook post

Formal and Informal Surveys for President

by | Mar 26, 2016 | Election 2016, Local News / Bohol Balita, Tech Talk

By: Jerome Auza

The last few weeks has been very interesting in the campaigns of the presidential candidates for the May 9, 2016 elections. Particularly interesting is the fact that formal surveys and informal surveys have widely contrasting results.

In recent formal surveys, Poe is leading while in mock elections in different universities nationwide, as well as online surveys and even in “cup” surveys in a 24-hour convenience store show Duterte consistently in the lead. The cup survey is done using cups for drinks printed with the face and names of the different candidates. The Duterte cups always get out of stock.

The formal surveys are conducted in a scientific method and the selection of respondents are done randomly in order to come up with results that are reliable and statistically representing the whole population.

The mock elections and online surveys are non-scientific because for one, they can only cover a certain group of people. For example, university surveys would include only students. In online surveys, these include only those with Internet access. In other words, they may not really represent the sentiment of the whole population.

However, there is the fact that the informal methods are done with a much larger sample of the population. In statistics, if you take a large enough sample, the tendency of the sample data is to match the whole sample. The mock elections held in universities are done nationwide, with sample size of around 1000 each or more. If you take into account that this is nationwide and the university students are obviously the youth, then it may be safe to say that the youth vote will go to Duterte. Results are varying in percentage but Duterte almost always leads the mock election results.

Now looking at the online surveys, I would like to use the Rappler online survey for February 2016 because the number of respondents is around 100,000. Also, another reason for using Rappler is that they learned how to ensure that only valid votes are counted because in an earlier survey, they discovered that votes for Roxas surged on a specific period with the votes identified as coming from China and Russia. That obviously was an attempt to manipulate the results. So assuming Rappler’s data for the February survey is filtered of invalid votes and with the number of respondents at 100,000, then at 39%, Duterte’s lead is quite significant.

Again, because of the tendency of a large sample to represent the whole population, it may be safe to say that the Rappler survey represents the Filipinos with access to the Internet.

Two large segments of our voting population, the youth and voters with Internet access are voting for Duterte. Obviously, there is an overlap of these two segments but if you combine these two segments, they are a very large percentage of all the voters.

Curiously, the most recent formal survey now shows that Duterte is about to gain the lead. Will Duterte eventually show as the significant leader in voting preference in the formal surveys in the coming weeks?

I would review the survey data again in a few weeks time to see where the numbers are. I have two questions for now:

Will the volunteerism of the Duterte supporters prove to be a force to be reckoned with versus traditional political machineries? Will social media ads of Duterte voluntarily done by supporters beat the other candidates’ heavily funded TV ads?

It remains to be seen.