I was hoping to finish a post on that million-$ surprise birthday gift to the prez but was completely distracted by the QUAD hearing that saw Alice aka Guo Hua Ping and Cassandra Ong back in their hot seats in Congress.

While the girls continue to invoke their right against self-incrimination, the fact that they fled the country back in July has been taken, naturally, as sign of guilt in connection with POGOs and related crimes, from falsification of documents to human trafficking to money laundering.  alice-guo-timeline/story/

Nakaka-impress ang documented info that Senators Risa and Win, and now the QUAD Reps, are surfacing in the course of interrogations and interpellations. Great research work. Or have these files/dossiers long been in the gathering by, maybe, civil society stalwarts, or plain political operators — Pinoy, Chinoy, CIA, whatever — just waiting for the right time to share with legislators?  At may matrix na rin daw, a la Dutz back in EJK days, how audacious.

But the most intriguing of all are these two girls, who are such unlikely Pinays, neither ever having gone daw to regular school, and yet we would never have guessed, given the confident way they carry themselves, with good command of English and Tagalog, one even got elected Mayor of Bamban at 36 (maybe 32, depending on what year she was really born); the other at 24 is the Authorized Rep of the Porac POGO Lucky South 99, and also the girlfriend of Alice’s brother Wesley, whose Chinese name Alice doesn’t know daw, I can’t imagine why.

Kapani-paniwala tuloy ang suspicion ni Tony Lopez ng Philstar that Alice speaks the truth when she says she grew up in a farm. /farm-spies-and-romances

Alice of Bambanland is determined to wear the senators’ patience thin by simply lying, lying, lying. Yes, this is a 34-year-old woman raised in a farm – a spy farm. Her training is good. In the CIA farm, one learns about “explosives, booby traps, escape and evasion techniques, survival training and interrogation.”

Per Quora, spy farms indeed were farms which were commandeered during World War II, along with the farmhouses, and repurposed into training schools for spy officers. So when Alice Guo says “laki ako sa farm,” she just might be telling the senators the truth. In this light, hindi kaya Guo’s lawyers are also “laki sa farm?” They lie better than Guo herself.

So maybe the Chinese version of a spy farm, complete with a piggery whose pigs had to be protected from germs from the outside world, which Alice alleges is the reason she wasn’t allowed to leave the farm and go to regular school like ordinary Pinoy kids. Kahit wala pa namang swine fever dito noon.

Fast-forward to QUAD. When she said she would only name names in an executive session because of death threats, the Reps asked if she would name the Filipino officials who facilitated her July escape, among other amazing stunts. Her reply was very definite: no local officials involved. Which of course raised everyone’s eyebrows. And when allowed by the Reps to make a final statement re an executive session, she said she would be willing if the Reps promised to believe her, referring I think to her earlier insistence that she could only tell of what and who she knew and she truly didn’t know a lot.

Quad comm’s mandate is [to] conduct hearings into the possible connection between Philippine offshore gaming operations (POGOs) and illegal drugs, extrajudicial killings (EJKs) and human rights violations during the bloody war waged by the six-year Rodrigo Roa Duterte presidency. /farm-spies-and-romances

I find myself giving Alice the benefit of the doubt only in the matter of how much she knows about the larger operation. I can believe that she’s a low-level player in the POGO game — her handlers tell her only what she needs to know. But it doesn’t mean she’s an insignificant catch, not when she was rising, slowly but surely, in the political arena.

It was like she came out of nowhere in 2022 — BBM had never heard of her before she was elected Bamban mayor as an independent, besting the NPC candidate in a 7-way fight.  And take note: during the campaign she endorsed BBM and Sara but “Angat Buhay” PINK was her color. What was up with that?

In the run-up to her election in 2022, Guo flew to a campaign event in her helicopter (black with a pink stripe) while crowds were treated to a huge firework display and DJ set. theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/04/inside-mystery-alice-guo-missing-philippines-mayor

By the 3rd quarter of 2023, she had so impressed the DILG — Benhur Abalos, was that you? Ikaw talaga! — that she was awarded a Seal of Good Local Governance, which apparently qualified her to join the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), the most sosyal of political parties founded by Danding Cojuangco. will-alice-guo-run-under-marcos-jr-slate-in-2025-elections-053

She has, of course, since been expelled from the party.

“The NPC will not tolerate any unlawful acts or any appearance of impropriety by its members that will undermine the principle of our party,” NPC President Vicente Sotto III said in a letter to Tarlac Gov. Susan Yap, the NPC provincial chairperson.
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2024/06/24/2365131/alice-guo-expelled-npc-member

Sabi nga ni NPC-affiliated Ping Lacson sa X:
https://x.com/iampinglacson/status/1833087910851260596

The way Guo Hua’ping a.k.a Alice Guo was taking the senators for a ride during the hearing, she could be a trained and smart foreign spy who had already started to climb the ladder of the country’s political structure as an elected municipal mayor.

In the realm of possibilities, she could be a member of Congress who has access to highly classified information with national security implications.

Had PAOCC not exposed her illegal activities, what if, in the long term, she and her handlers, using money and/or influence, manage to get her appointed as DND secretary or National Security Adviser?

Paktaylo na tayo!

Indeed. That was a close call. Question is, how many more Alices and Cassandras are running around our political circles, if not already deeply highly embedded.