“No matter who is in power, we have remained fearless in our truth-telling. We will continue our work while we also consider all legal remedies available to question, and stop yet another state-sponsored repression.”
Independence of mind as well as of the Filipino nation that was yet to be was what Rizal, Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, and company wrote, fought and died for. And they are inextricably linked, the first being the essential condition for the achievement of the second.
Yesterday president-in-waiting Ferdinand Marcos Jr. named Juan Ponce Enrile as his presidential legal counsel. A key implementor during Marcos Sr.’s martial law dictatorship, Enrile figured prominently in the latter’s ouster by popular uprising in 1986. He still faces charges of plunder as former Senate president.
On the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, the Eucharist shows us that the way forward is not to focus on ourselves and on our “truths” but to move toward others, especially those who are in need, as Jesus Christ had shown us in his life, ministry, passion and resurrection. There are no alternative truths and we cannot own the truth.
“No matter what we do, it seems that it is still not enough.”
Their unlawful arrest brought to mind how while the rest of the world is being plagued by a storm that is the COVID-19, not everyone is able to ride the tides with sturdy boats.
“We call on the CHR and the various UN human rights and environmental offices we have worked with in the past years to undertake preventive interventions against these human rights abuses and threats.”
When humankind was brought into being, they were not just any kind of creatures, but beings created in God’s likeness. God wants to share something of the Divinity, something within the Triune God which seeks to be expressed and can only be expressed by bringing into being humankind and the whole creation.
The accreditation of bloggers that Marcos Junior’s choice for Press Secretary (she will also head the Presidential Communication Operations Office or PCOO) is planning is not new. It was also considered by her predecessor, but abandoned because of problems over which bloggers would join the Malacañang Press Corps in covering the President.
But this week, international attention has turned to the Philippines as Ferdinand Marcos Jr. prepares to become the country’s next president. Instead of stamping out reminders of tyranny, will there be a restoration? With an ousted dictator’s son taking power, will historical documents be destroyed? Will the memories of victims be forcibly erased?
“The audacity of China to impose a fishing ban on the pretext of marine conservation when it is the one plundering our marine waters through its aggression.”