By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat perspective During the first sixteen months of the Duterte administration, a lot has happened. The battle for the once bustling Islamic City of Marawi that lasted five long months, beginning May 23, 1017 and ended the last week of October, reduced the city to ruins. Buildings, properties, and businesses were destroyed;…
By RENAN ORTIZ
For ten days (Oct. 16-25) peasants from Mindanao, Visayas, and Luzon motored, sailed, and trekked to the National Capital Region in what they called “Pambansang Lakbayan ng Magsasaka para sa Lupa at Laban sa Pasismo.” Having camped outside the gate of the Department of Agrarian Reform (as they had annually done for many years), they…
After saying that he still “has to talk to the NPA (New People’s Army),” by which statement he meant that the Government of the Philippines will have to resume peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), President Rodrigo Duterte announced that he’s not yet ready to do so. His latest statements…
The late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos was touted to be a brilliant lawyer. Rodrigo R. Duterte, who idolizes the tyrant, prides himself on having been a prosecutor. But as the country’s presidents, each in his own time, both made erroneous public pronouncements about rebellion as a political offense. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is no lawyer. As…
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat perspective A week ago, President Duterte threatened to declare a revolutionary government purportedly to counter destabilization moves by the Reds (communists), the Yellows (Liberal Party), the elite, and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Once he declares a revolutionary government, he threatened to arrest those who he accuses of destabilizing his…
By RENAN ORTIZ
Apparently stung by the steep drops in his satisfaction and trust ratings, as shown by the latest Social Weather Stations survey, President Duterte has taken a one-step backward in his widely criticized and condemned bloody anti-illegal drug campaign, led by the Philippine National Police. He had earlier expressed his concern about preserving his credibility to…
BLOOD RUSH By SARAH RAYMUNDO It is not the case that “fake news” erodes democracy. Fake democracy yields “faith in fakes”(1) Yet in what was manufactured as a defense of truth, accountability and democracy, the Philippine Senate held a hearing on fake news. Notable propagandists of the Duterte regime were summoned and questioned on their…
President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed his displeasure over the continuing attention being paid by various groups and organizations such as Amnesty International and other human rights groups and the United Nations, to the extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the country, particularly those identified with the regime’s murderous “war” on drugs. Thirty-nine countries have also signed a…
When President Rodrigo Duterte says something really outrageous then it backfires or he is proven to be lying or at least dissembling, he uses several tricks to get away with it. He or his apologists say he was just joking and because we are so gullible, we are asking for it. Or they say he…