“Low key” is how this year’s commemoration of the February 1986 civilian-military uprising known as EDSA 1 is being described by the Duterte regime. There will be none of the “Salubungan” (the meeting of the key leaders of the mutiny and defecting police and military officers) that had been part of the celebration since the…
The campaign by President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies in Congress for the restoration of the death penalty is replete with irony. Capital punishment is supposed to discourage criminality while at the same time insuring that those who commit certain crimes get what they deserve. But what’s likely is that rather than deter crime and…
The unfortunately named Magdalo group — the Magdalo was the Katipunan faction that murdered Andres Bonifacio and Antonio Luna — identified with Senator Antonio Trillanes IV has a point. It doesn’t do anyone any good for the Philippine government (GPH), particularly the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and President Rodrigo Duterte on the one…
Almost always inaccurate are generalizations about any group, whether a race, a social class, an ethnic community, a profession — or, for that matter, a government agency and its personnel. There’s always someone who’s an exception to a rule widely presumed to be true. Stereotyping can also be dangerous, and often is. Not all Chinese…
To Samuel Johnson (born 1709; died 1784), poet, essayist and author of A Dictionary of the English Language (published in April, 1755), do we owe the observation that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” His biographer James Boswell (born 1740; died 1795) claimed that Johnson wasn’t condemning patriotism but how it was being…
Elvis Presley faked his own death in 1977, and at the ripe old age of 81 still lives today as a grounds keeper in Graceland, the home he purchased in Memphis, Tennessee at the height of his film, music and television career in 1957. The military-industrial complex — the alliance between the US military and…
The advent of every new year inevitably brings with it not only the cheery predictions of hacks who claim to have the power to foretell what will happen in the next 12 months by telling the world which celebrity will be sleeping with whom or how the economy will perform. It’s also one more opportunity…
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Although critical of President Benigno Aquino III, Senate minority leader—and former Marcos defense minister– Juan Ponce Enrile verbalized what the Aquino administration hasn’t been explicitly saying about the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). Speaking to the media a day after the Supreme Court ruling that EDCA is…
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld As announced by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), the official election season began last Jan. 10 and will end on June 8 this year. It includes a campaign period starting February and ending in May; election day itself on May 9; the counting of the ballots; and…
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld A Senate “reinvestigation” of the Mamasapano incident to coincide with its first anniversary on Jan. 25 this year has been proposed by Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, who claims to have new information relevant to establishing what really happened. But coming as it does on practically the eve…
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld If there were an award for the most duplicitous story of the year, it should go to the Philippine National Police (PNP) for its claim that the bullets that are being regularly “discovered” in the luggage of airline passengers have not been planted by so-called security personnel…