PNoy, Grace Lee break up; Pacquiao gets the cold shoulder

MANILA, Philippines – We’ve confirmed it with 3 sources close to the President: he’s broken up with Grace Lee. The breakup happened just this April.

This ends what initially looked like a serious relationship for the country’s most powerful leader. Only in March, a Palace staffer was telling us about how the President seemed so “happy” and “always in a good mood” on account of his special friendship with the Korean radio and TV personality.

The President started dating the 29-year-old Grace Lee in January. On February 1, he admitted going out with her. Queried by reporters then, the President said that, yes, they were “seeing each other.”

This took a strange twist two weeks later, when she was misquoted as having declared in a TV show that she saw herself marrying the President. Lee angrily denied the report.

Well, that denial has basis, after all.

PNoy snubs Pacquiao

MANILA, Philippines – Two years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a sitting president not to acknowledge the presence of Sarangani Rep Manny Pacquiao in a public event. But on Friday, April 13, reporters observed the apparent presidential snub that the world champion got during the Mindanao Power Summit in Davao City.

President Benigno Aquino III acknowledged the presence of key officials at the summit but not Pacquiao. Energy Secretary Rene Almendras was quick to the draw, however, and said he was “breaking protocol” to recognize the presence of Pacquiao ahead of the President’s speech.

Pacquiao backed Aquino’s chief rival in the 2010 presidential race, Sen Manny Villar. Before that, he was a close political ally of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. And only recently, he announced his plans to run for governor in 2013 under the party of Vice President Jejomar Binay, PDP-Laban.

Wealthy colonel

The Armed Forces high command should conduct a lifestyle check on this ambitious military lieutenant colonel who already passes himself off as a full colonel in a number of press releases.

He has figured prominently in key military operations in the South and headed an intelligence unit for quite sometime. In his stint in this unit, he gained notoriety as a bounty hunter. Critics accuse him of converting his “bounty” into his personal wealth, investing it in luxury vehicles, real estate properties, and a “family business.”

The officer obviously does not know what “tuwid na daan” means. Then again, maybe he does. At the rate he’s raking it in, he’s carved out a straight path to…a wealthy life. – Rappler.com

(Inside Track is Rappler’s intelligencer on people, events, places and everything of public interest. Contributions are most welcome. Just send bits of information to desk@rappler.com)