FACES OF THE NEWS
Arjo Atayde
Actor Arjo Atayde and nine others tested positive for the coronavirus on Aug. 16, after a monthlong shoot in Baguio City. They were quickly isolated and Atayde was told to wait for a contact-tracing team, but the actor left the summer capital on Aug. 17. An aide to Mayor Benjamin Magalong said Atayde’s sudden exit violated COVID-19 protocols. Magalong ordered an investigation since two cases of the Delta variant were reported in the city earlier in the week. Feelmaking Productions, the outfit behind Atayde’s film-in-progress “Hey Joe,” later apologized, saying the actor had high fever, headache, difficulty in breathing that day, as well as a medical condition that required him to be treated at a Manila hospital. “Hey Joe” is not the only film being shot in Baguio. Seven shooting permits were issued by City Hall this year. Baguio’s landscape and relative isolation have been drawing filmmakers, but artists overseeing the Baguio Creative Council are now studying a different protocol for filming in the mountain city.
Lloyd Christopher Lao
Former Budget Undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao apparently could not slip quietly back into private life after his resignation in June. His name surfaced at the Senate inquiry on the transfer of P42 billion of the Department of Health (DOH) to the Department of Budget and Management’s Procurement Service (PS-DBM) to buy allegedly overpriced face masks and face shields. Lao, who headed PS-DBM when the purchase happened, appeared unexpectedly on state-run PTV 4 on Friday to explain the high prices and why the purchase was coursed through his office. But Sen. Panfilo Lacson still wants to question him over the “overpricing binge’’ related to the other PS-DBM purchases, which the lawmaker said went unchecked because of Lao’s connections to powerful higher-ups. Former Special Assistant to the President and now Sen. Bong Go quickly denied that Lao used to be his aide. Lao maintained that he just got “lucky” to land a job in the Presidential Management Staff. He said he was willing to appear in the Senate probe of DOH transactions. —LEILA B. SALAVERRIA
Michael Aguinaldo
Commission on Audit (COA) chair Michael Aguinaldo has remained unfazed despite the verbal flogging his agency received from President Duterte, after the COA called out various agencies for “deficiencies” in the use of pandemic response funds, particularly the Department of Health (DOH). Aguinaldo said the COA would continue to perform its constitutional mandate to scrutinize public spending and publish its findings. The COA earlier reported the health department’s poor handling of the P67.32-billion COVID-19 funds for 2020 and its failure to use about P11.8 billion in other allocations. Forced to provide answers, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III turned emotional at a House hearing last week, accusing the COA of “destroying” his department’s reputation. Duque said he and other DOH officials had been “sleepless” due to “shame” because of the COA report. Aguinaldo, however, maintained that due process was observed in the state audit, saying several meetings and an exit conference were held with the DOH before the report came out. —NESTOR CORRALES
The Taliban
The United States trained 300,000 Afghan security forces and gave them $28 billion in weapons and equipment, yet the Taliban swept through Afghanistan, taking all major cities in just 10 days, including the capital, Kabul, last week. To say that the Taliban victory was surprising is an understatement. President Joe Biden and most US military top brass thought the Afghan military and police could still hold off the Islamists for up to three months from the start of the Taliban offensive in early August. “We gave them every tool they could need,” Biden said, including 600,000 assault rifles, 2,000 armored vehicles and 40 aircraft—with Black Hawk helicopters to boot. When hostilities broke out, American soldiers and airpower were sorely missed. With US military presence reduced after a peace deal in February 2020, Afghan security forces lost morale and crumbled, either surrendering or fleeing as the Taliban advanced. The billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment provided by Washington ironically ended up in Taliban hands, fueling their victory.
Ashraf Ghani
Saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani left the presidential palace in Kabul (reportedly with four cars and a chopper full of cash) to the insurgent Taliban fighters who had toppled his government in a matter of weeks. First elected president in 2014, Ghani took over from Hamid Karzai, who led the country after the US-led invasion in 2001. He oversaw the conclusion of the US combat mission, the near-complete withdrawal of foreign forces from the country, as well as a fractious peace process with the insurgent Taliban. The former World Bank academic was reelected in 2019. An increasingly isolated figure, he made the effort to end decades of war a priority, despite continuing attacks by the Islamist militants, and began peace talks with the insurgents in Doha, Qatar, in 2020. Ghani was a vocal critic of “wasted international aid” in Afghanistan and often did not see eye to eye with the West on on its Afghan strategy, particularly when it looked to fast-track the peace process with the Taliban.