GUO, GOING, GONE

August 24, 2024 Opinion

“Alice” Guo Hua Ping the embattled and suspended mayor of Bamban, Tarlac seems to have done a Houdini like disappearing act evading and avoiding arrest by the authorities for her failure to appear before the Senate in the
conduct of its investigation on POGO hubs alleged to be operated by crime syndicates. In a report, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, who along with Senator Risa Hontiveros is conducting the Senate probe on the POGO hub raided in
Bamban, Tarlac, believes that Mayor Guo Hua Ping is still in the country but is attempting to depart for mainland China.

Gatchalian also expressed the suspicion that the suspended mayor may still be in possession of her Chinese
passport as insurance in order to be able to leave the country successfully. On the matter of her disapperance the suspended mayor may have just dug herself a deeper hole from which to climb out of over the festering controversy
regarding her alleged involvement in the operation POGO hubs within her jurisdiction that are linked to scams, human trafficking, money laundering and even alleged torture.

Her reluctance to further participate in the ongoing Senate investigation despite subpoenas issued for her appearance lends credence to the suspicion that she must be hiding something or, she is actually what the
investigating Senators are claiming, that she is the facilitator and protector of the POGO hub in Bamban. But what is really troubling in this controversy is the facility and ease by which Mayor “Alice” Guo Hua Ping is able to disappear without a trace and remains missing as of the writing of this column.

In the same way that other very popular personalities are able to make themselves disappear and thus evade arrest by authorities for alleged crimes they have committed – Pastor Apollo Quiboloy of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, former prison chief Gerald Bantag, and the infamous former Congressman Arnulfo Teves, Jr.– the suspended mayor is suddenly nowhere to be found and has left a cryptic facebook message to her constituents that she “would not be around” temporarily.

On the other hand our authorities are not to be blamed and should not be held liable for failing to apprehend these high value personalities since their limited resources are nothing compared to the wealth and connections these
fugitives have amassed and are available at their fingertips and disposal. In the case of suspended Bamban mayor Hua Ping the Court of Appeals has already issued a freeze order on the assets of the mayor as well as other personalities linked to her and which covers some 90 bank accounts, real properties, and high-value personal properties including a helicopter and luxury vehicles.

But that does not take into account other allegations that the Chinese government is also linked to the suspended mayor as well as other shady organizations that have yet to be uncovered and disclosed and so she may yet have support and the necessary funds to sustain her while she is in hiding from the authorities. What is also unsettling is the fact that suspended mayor “Alice Go” thru her lawyer had the temerity to file a petition in the Supreme Court (SC) to annul and set aside the subpoena issued by the Senate in relation to its investigation over alleged criminal activities involving POGOs.

It should be made clear to the suspended mayor that she is an elected public official and therefore accountable not
only to her constituents but to  the general public as well. Being an elected official and a mayor at that she should realize that it is her responsibility to be physically present in public in the discharge of her duties. Even granting that she has been suspended from her office, still as a government official she is supposed to make herself available when she is instructed or directed to do so. Making herself disappear and naturally unable to present herself to the Senate
will only bolster the suspicion that somehow she is in fact complicit in the shady affairs imputed against her.