The spy and the paramour

The spy and the paramour Featured

Lito Monico C. Lorenzana
LML Polettiques
16 August 2024
Comments:DISQUS_COMMENTS
OF late, I have been mulling the idea of shifting my columns away from several weeks of parsing out the US presidential elections and focusing back on the Philippine scene. Much has transpired lately, particularly of the salacious type: one, a made-for-TV documentary and the other, the "marites" kind. The first is the suspected Chinese sleeper-agent Mayor Guo of Pampanga, and the other is the exposé of a former paramour of a billionaire businessman crackhead on BBM and Liza as "polvoron-in-chiefs."

Deep-cover spies

"The Americans," a political thriller on Netflix that ran for five seasons (2013-2018), is about two Russian spy agents posing as an average American couple complete with family embedded into an American middle-class community at the height of the Cold War. The synopsis of the movie describes "... a pair of deep-cover Soviet KGB spies masquerading as a typical suburban Washington DC couple whose children, neighbors, coworkers and friends are completely unaware of their activities. At home, they're the stereotypical parents of stereotypical kids; at work, they pose as travel agents; but at night, they weave a web of confidantes, lovers, dupes and historical figures from the Reagan-era Cold War. The startlingly realistic plot twists force the viewer to consider the real cost of an undeclared war, what it takes to protect one's beliefs, if it's worth it, and if it actually worked for either side.

Philip and Elizabeth Jennings seem like the average American couple. Married for nearly 20 years, they have two children, masking a secret double life: they were planted in the US nearly 20 years previously. It is the early 1980s and the height of the Cold War, with Philip and Elizabeth at the forefront of the USSR's attempts to gain information on US activities and weaponry. Tasked with countering espionage and tracking down Soviet spies is a special division of the FBI."

Chinese sleeper agent

In the Senate hearings conducted by Sen. Risa Hontiveros, a real-life narrative is unfolding of a parallel scenario. Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac, has the makings of a true-to-life Chinese-run sleeper spy agent. Guo, a young lady unknown in the political circles but with a lot of cash, burst into the scene and won as town mayor.

What caught the eye of the public and the authorities was Guo's connection to the illegal Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs), online gambling services to the Chinese market. It is illegal in China but allowed to operate from the Philippines and proliferated at the start of President Duterte's administration. This could become a source of tremendous illegal funds, with its tentacles encompassing the political infrastructure of the country, if it had remained unchecked.

Consider what was revealed at the Senate hearings: 35-year-old Guo, who doesn't remember much about her childhood, had her birth certificate registered only on Nov. 22, 2005, years after her designated birth. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) presented documents that the certificate was fraudulently acquired from a certain Alice Leal Guo, born on July 12, 1986. It is a stolen identity. Further complications ensued as another "Chinese national Guo Hua Ping matched Mayor Guo's fingerprints, establishing they were the same person." ("Guo faces more cases as probe deepens" by Javier Joe Ismael, The Manila Times, June 29, 2024)

She couldn't remember much of her past, the house where she was born, no school records and no known high school classmates as she was reportedly homeschooled by a certain teacher named Rubilyn, whose existence couldn't be established.

The puzzle has become more complicated as it was established that before entering politics, the pig-raising private citizen Guo petitioned the Bamban municipal council to allow Hongsheng Gaming Technology Inc. to operate an 8-hectare POGO hub in Barangay Anupul with 36 buildings. This company later changed its business name to Zun Yuan Technology Inc. after Philippine authorities raided the place on charges of human trafficking and serious illegal detention in February 2023.

Bambam, Tarlac became one of the biggest hubs of POGO in central Luzon, with Mayor Alice Guo as the central figure. In this still unfolding drama, Hontiveros declared the Guo to be a Chinese "asset" trained to infiltrate and influence the Philippine government. Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian suspects that the assumption of Guo to political power signals that the Philippines "was entering the era of so-called POGO politics." ("Is Alice Leal Guo real?" by Tita C. Valderama, TMT, May 13, 2024)

In these coming months, Hontiveros and Gatchalian may yet establish Mayor Guo as just the tip of the iceberg of Chinese sleeper agents in the Philippines. The Office of the Ombudsman has ordered the preventive suspension of Mayor Guo.

The paramour

A few days back, a certain Cathy Binag was interviewed twice by Maharlika, a YouTube blogger whose posts about the Marcos family's alleged penchant for snorting "polvoron" — the street name for cocaine, an illegal drug — have been going viral. This was former President Duterte's bete noire that precipitated his war on drugs during his rule, which has now become the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation. Cathy Binag did not mince words, implicating Liza Marcos, BBM himself, two of their children and a coterie of advisers and childhood friends of BBM and Cathy's paramour, former Davao del Norte congressman Tony Boy Floirendo. Another of the names dropped was that of former congressman Anton Lagdameo, Tony Boy's nephew, who is now presidential special assistant to BBM.

As a backgrounder, Tony Boy and Cathy were an item as "mag-un" in Visayan parlance, although both have long been separated from their respective legal spouses for several years. Cathy disclosed that their affair started in 2011 and that they lived together up to Feb. 17, 2021 — a good 10 years. Floirendo and Binag were hobnobbing with Manila's elite but were not really that much accepted by the conservative local elite — to which Floirendo belonged by blood or affinity. Floirendo put up a premier dining restaurant in Davao City called The White House offering Chinese fusion cuisine of "the best Szechuan dishes," complete with an imported Chinese chef and a cellar of expensive wines. This was overseen by Cathy, purported to be a gourmand herself. The restaurant closed after two years.

What was egregious about all these was that Cathy's revelations of Malacañang officialdom indulging in "polvoronic parties" were never picked up by mainstream media. I quote from TMT colleague Bobi Tiglao's column:

"Yet Philippine mainstream media, mainly the six big Manila-based broadsheets and tabloids, as well as the biggest broadcast outfits and the US-funded internet-only news outfit, have totally ignored this explosive story that reveals the character not only of President Marcos but also his innermost circle of friends since his college days. Mainstream media have not published nor broadcast a single news article, not a single opinion column.

"Even self-styled guardians of press freedom, especially the US-funded media outfits like Vera Files, Rappler, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, are exposed as minions by this Binag exposé. They have been totally silent on this issue." ("PH mainstream media betrays democracy" by Rigoberto D. Tiglao, TMT, Aug 12, 2024)

Go figure!000
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