NO MATTER their official justification for being — whether “so the trains will run on time,” “to save the Republic and reform society,” or “to rid the country of crime and illegal drugs” — dictatorships are premised on the presumption that the dictator knows best and everyone else is ignorant and incompetent. President Rodrigo Duterte…
FERDINAND “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., then an outgoing senator, ran for the vice-presidency in 2016. He has refused to concede defeat to Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo and is contesting her victory before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET). Well-known are his far from secret ambitions for the presidency of the Republic, to which his winning…
LIVING in the Philippines has always been challenging and difficult for many Filipinos. But never since the Marcos dictatorship has it been more dangerous than today for Lumad, dissenters, women, human rights defenders and the poor. In response to life’s daily perils, some 20% of the population — or roughly 20 million men and women…
WERE they fools duped into boarding the “federalist ship,” and drafting and defending a constitution that would supposedly bring into fruition President Rodrigo Duterte’s oft-repeated claim that a shift to a federal form of government would accelerate the development of the country’s poorest regions? At least one member of the Duterte-appointed Consultative Committee (Con-Com), who…
No, he doesn’t want to die; he just wants others put to death. Boxer Manny Pacquiao, whose fists made him a part-time, occasional senator of this unfortunate Republic, says he’s going to rush the restoration of the death penalty through a bill in the Senate by the end of the year. He’s been campaigning for…
A television comedy director was supposed to direct it, and did hold at least one rehearsal over the weekend. But the directorial prowess of Joyce Bernal wasn’t in much evidence except in President Rodrigo Duterte’s subdued though less than forthright State of the Nation Address (SONA) this year. Together with the protest outside the House…
Freedom of the press is not just about the right to say or print anything; it also includes the duty of creating an informed and engaged audience, which is specially crucial in times of peril such as the present.
Before Rodrigo Duterte, no Philippine president, as morally challenged as some of them may have been, had ever disparaged Catholicism and Christianity, much less cursed the God Christians, Muslims, and Jews worship in common. Even Ferdinand Marcos, to whose overthrow in 1986 both the institutional Church as well as its activists contributed, did not take…
In a far from modest and less than truthful description of itself, the Philippine government, said a Malacañang statement, is “headed by someone who has strong political will, decisive leadership, and compassion for his fellow men,” hence the “fruitful” first two years of the six-year Rodrigo Duterte presidency. How “fruitful” have the past two years…
President Rodrigo Duterte has denied ordering the arrest of “istambay” (the plural form of Filipino nouns is not formed with an “s”) despite the Philippine National Police’s detention of over 7,000 mostly young people, and the death, most likely through a police beating, of at least one individual who had stepped shirtless out of his…
The killing of three priests over the last six months — of Fr. Marcelito Paez last December, 2017, Fr. Mark Ventura in April, and Fr. Richmond Nilo this June — has provoked both outrage as well as fears that it is part of the Duterte regime’s campaign to silence its critics. Priests have been murdered…