VOL. XXIX NO. 339 3 Sections 24 Pages P18 SUNDAY : JANUARY 17, 2016 www.thestandard.com.ph editorial@thestandard.com.ph
EL NIÑO HITS 32 AREAS
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TERROR THREAT SEEN TO LINGER By Francisco Tuyay
SECURITY experts should continue to gather in-depth data and seriously assess the threat of terrorism in the country after the jihadist attack in Jakarta on Thursday and the arrest of four militants in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, according to a former police intelligence official.
Former police general Rodolfo Mendoza, one of the officials who busted the Bojinka plot to assassinate the pope and crash airplanes into skyscrapers in 1995, said the authorities should step up data gathering and assessment instead of belittling information. “There must be a continuing process of overt investigation and data gathering in order to determine and approximate the threat of terrorism in the country,” Mendoza said, a day after
President Benigno Aquino III again belittled reports of jihadist threats in the Philippines. “Several Malaysian and Indonesian jihadist already have a physical presence in Mindanao to integrate and consolidate their vision of an Islamic caliphate in this part of the world,” said Mendoza, who now heads his own security think tank Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research.
In fact, Mendoza said, the military have already killed Indonesian bomb maker Sucipto Ibrahim Ali in November and Malaysian bomb maker Mohamad Najib Husen in December. Both bomb experts are associates of Dr. Mahmud Ahmad, a lecturer at Universiti Malaya’s Islamic Studies faculty who is also known as “Abu Handzalah,” who fled Malaysian authorities who were out to arrest him and sought refuge with the Abu Sayyaf group. Next page
ISIS AGENTS. File photo shows supposed Abu Sayyaf members pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in a video posted on YouTube. AFP
HOMEGROWN FOOD FIRMS TO GO GLOBAL
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BISHOP, YOUTH SLAM SSS BILL VETO PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino III’s veto of a bill increasing the pensions of retirees continued to elicit criticism with a youth group assailing Aquino’s insult to the elderly and a bishop saying the act only showed the Chief Executive’s lack of empathy for a suffering people. Vencer Crisostomo, chairman of
the youth group Anakbayan, said Aquino’s offer of a P500 hike instead of the proposed P2,000 SSS pension increase was an “insult” to the elderly. Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo echoed the criticism and said Aquino’s action only shows his lack of empathy for or-
dinary Filipinos, whom he calls his “bosses.” “By vetoing the bill for increase of pension of SSS members, PNoy has clearly shown that his program of ‘inclusive growth’ is mere rhetoric,” Pabillo said. “Do we vote those who will continue this anti-poor Next page policy?”