Alice Guo expelled as NPC member

MANILA, Philippines — Suspended Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo has been removed from the Nationalist People’s Coalition’s roster amid her alleged links to Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs), former Senate president and NPC chairman Vicente Sotto III said yesterday.  

Guo is under preventive suspension ordered by the ombudsman due to complaints for graft and qualified human trafficking, linking her to the conspiracy to commit labor trafficking of around 500 foreign POGO workers, he noted.  

“The NPC will not tolerate any unlawful acts or any appearance of impropriety by its members that will undermine the principle of our party,” Sotto said in a letter to Tarlac Gov. Susan Yap, the NPC provincial chairperson. 

Yap earlier petitioned for Guo’s removal from the NPC.  

Guo won as an independent candidate during the 2022 elections, later joining the NPC, which recently entered into an alliance with President Marcos’ Partido Federal. 

Her suspension stemmed from a graft complaint filed by the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Sotto recalled. 

A qualified human trafficking case has also been filed against Guo by the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, he added. 

“The mystery of her citizenship, further, has clouded her qualification to be a member of our party,” Yap said. 

“If the evidence being presented, tending to show that Mayor Guo is ‘Guo Hua Ping’ is proven to be true, it would then appear that there was deception from her end when she ran for public office,” she added.

Meanwhile, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian supported the NPC’s decision to expel Guo.

“As a member of the NPC Advisory Council, I fully support her expulsion from the party. It would be very difficult for members of the party to govern with integrity and probity if we cannot discipline our own ranks,” he said.

Gatchalian and Sen. Risa Hontiveros have been investigating POGOs in Tarlac, which were used as a front for crimes such as human trafficking.