Category: Question Everything

QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com If the future generation will ask us about Philippine politics during the early years of the 21st century, what should we tell them? Perhaps some historians will name it as Erap’s decade. In 1998, Joseph Estrada became the most popular Philippine president in terms of number of votes. Two years…

QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Public opinion has many uses but it should neither stand for truth nor should it be equated with political standpoint. Sometimes it is overrated despite its ephemerality. Consider the examples below: – Senator Miriam Santiago is the darling of the press and social media superstar who entertains the public with…

QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com The government is always claiming that the number of poor is decreasing but it cannot deny the phenomenal growth of informal settlers across the country, especially in Metro Manila, in the past decade. According to a study cited by the government-funded Philippine Institute for Development Studies, about 5 percent of…

QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Waray, which refers to both the lingua franca and the people of Samar and Leyte, literally means nothing. It is interesting and also quite strange that this term is also used to signify nothingness. But can there be something out of nothing? Can nothing produce something? Today, the word Waray…

QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Despite its high Gross Domestic Product in recent years, the Philippines has remained a backward nation. Poverty numbers didn’t change although wealth disparity has worsened especially between the rural and the urban. It’s clear that the GDP is an inaccurate and inadequate measure of the real state of the economy.…

QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Last part of four series First part | 13 natural and man-made disasters of 2013 Second part | ‘We Should Legalize Everything’ and Other Shocking Sound Bites of 2013 Third part | ‘Wrecking Ball’ and other objects that made news in 2013 Despite the calamities that brought unprecedented devastation in…

QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Second of four-part series First part | 13 natural and man-made disasters of 2013 Third part | Wrecking Ball and other Objects that Made News in 2013 2013 was a calamitous year for the Philippines – earthquakes, strong typhoons, bus crashes, corruption scandals. The reactions of various newsmakers to these…

QUESTION EVERYTHING? Mong Palatino? Bulatlat.com 1. The decision to adopt the acronym KKK was a radical act. The letter K was not part of the Tagalog alphabet during the time of Rizal and Bonifacio. Since Filipinos at that time were using the Spanish writing system, the letter K was represented by letter C. The Kataastaasan…

QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com If there is a bigger calamity than super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), it must be the Philippine government which has been notoriously inept in the wake of the devastation wrought by the storm in the Visayas. But aside from deficiency in leadership, the slow response of the government also reflected the…