Month: February 2022

5 killed in Davao de Oro are civilians, not NPA, group says

“Throughout their years of service, Chad, Jurain, and Elgyn had been subjected to threats, harassment, intimidation, including death threats, red-tagging and terror-tagging, and surveillance. It is then even more deplorable that the people who take up the initiative to serve in far-flung communities, where the Duterte government cares little to address the needs of its residents, are targeted and killed,” SOS Network said.

All over but the counting?

Elections are among those exercises through which a free people are able to delegate their sovereign powers of self-government to their chosen representatives. Surely the Comelec knows that elections have to be free, honest, and fair to be legitimate expressions of the people’s will. It was precisely to make sure that they are, rather than the means through which the oligarchs can endow themselves with a semblance of legitimacy so they can remain in power, that the Comelec was created in 1940 through an amendment in the 1935 Constitution.

Martial law dictatorship red-tagged bishop, two nuns

Many citizens today, particularly the youth, may think that the Duterte administration invented red-tagging. But they should not be surprised to learn that almost 50 years ago – under his martial-law one-man rule – Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was already sticking that label on those who openly criticized and opposed him. Certainly, the term “red-tagging” was not in use then, but the alleged acts invoked fitted those in the above-cited definitions.