WHAT you need to know...
...If you didn't know yet. Quickly, at a glance:
[1] CEBU CITY AND REST OF CEBU CONTINUE UNDER MGCQ or modified general community quarantine from Thursday, October 1 until October 31, a Saturday. Meaning more of the same category of quarantine that Cebu had just completed in the entire month of September.
As to the rest of the country, it's MGCQ too, except Lanao del Sur, including Marawi City, which is MECQ or modified enhanced. Metro Manila continues under GCQ, while Iloilo City shifts from MECQ to GCQ. Other GCQs in October include Tacloban City and Bacolod City for the Visayas.
[2] BIDEN WON IN FIRST TRUMP-BIDEN DEBATE. A CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by pollster SSRS said "former vice president Joe Biden did the best job in the debate" Tuesday night (Wednesday morning, September 30 in Philippines) and just 28 percent said President Trump did -- or six in 10 of those polled said Biden won. The same poll showed 56 percent said they expected Biden to do better and only 43 percent said they expected that Trump would.
[3] CAYETANO PREVAILS IN ROW OVER HOUSE SPEAKERSHIP. Marinduque Representative Lord Allan Velasco will replace House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano on October 14. President Rodrigo Duterte decided to enforce the sharing agreement he brokered in 2019, under which Cayetano leads the House for the first 15 months of the 18th Congress while Velasco leads in the last 21 months. The affirmation was made in a meeting presided Tuesday night by the president.
Libel raps vs Alcover, Ayuman
Cebu City Councilor Prisca Niña Mabatid Tuesday (September 29) withdrew the complaint for libel she filed last November 28, 2019 against former city councilor Pastor Alcover Jr., former Barangay Apas captain Ramil Ayuman and a City Hall employee who with another female co-worker had complained against a department head for sexual harassment.
In that complaint, Mabatid cited alleged defamatory posts made by the two former public officials in their separate Facebook accounts and asked for P5 million in moral damages. She also cited a statement in the newspapers quoting Ayuman as having a tape-recording of an alleged phone talk between the councilor and one of the complainants in the sexual harassment complaint. Mabatid, chairperson of the City Council committee on women, children and family affairs, allegedly persuaded the complainant to withdraw their sexual harassment case.
She is withdrawing not just the complaint filed with the Cebu City prosecutor's office. She told Bzzzzz she is also throwing out complaints she filed in Manila and other cities, "a total of 28 counts in all."
'Can forgive, can never forget'
In her September 29 motion for the withdrawal of the case with the Cebu City Prosecutor's Office, scheduled for hearing Friday, October 2, Councilor Mabatid said her decision was the result of "much soul-searching" and as a "peaceful compromise" with herself. In the time of the pandemic, she said, there is "no more room" in her heart "to hold grudges against anyone."
Alcover and Ayuman are also her party-mates (in Partido Barug), she said, and she is doing it "for the sake of our group, Barug-PDP Laban."
She said she wanted "to stay prudent, grounded, quiet and calm," no matter "how much they humiliated" and "lambasted" her on social media. She said she is "(too) numb already to get hurt anyway." "I can forgive but can never forget coz I'm only human."
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