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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...
With no sense of irony, it seems, did the United States “grant” Philippine independence on the same date as its own independence day, nearly half a century after Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed independence in Kawit, Cavite on June 12, 1898, and the First Republic was...
Upon the declaration of martial law in 1972 and in the 14 years that followed, the Marcos terror regime arrested, abducted, and detained over a hundred thousand political activists; artists, writers and critical journalists; teachers, professors, lawyers and other...
His attacks on the press are “repulsive,” and “he should be the figure of suspicion, not the press,” when it comes to “fake news.” A president who “constantly deflects and distorts and distracts — who must find someone else to blame — is charting a very dangerous...
The newly elected president of the Senate has been accused of plagiarism, of disrespecting women, of cluelessness about the most pressing issues of public concern, and of ignorance of the Constitution. During the debate on the Reproductive Health Bill, Vicente...
The unprecedented removal through quo warranto proceedings of Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno from her post isn’t only about her, or solely about the Supreme Court, the rule of law, the Constitution, or the Duterte regime and its autocratic pretensions. Even more...
President Rodrigo Duterte’s statement that China has promised to protect the Philippines from external threats immediately raises two questions. Who or what these external threats could be is the first. But the second is, Who will protect the Philippines from...
Four media-related events occurred within days of each other last week. One was the release by the press freedom watch group Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF — Reporters Without Borders) of a report on the troubled state of press freedom in many countries including...
The gulf between what President Rodrigo Duterte says and what he does is raising already dangerous levels of cynicism about government and governance even among those who supported him in the 2016 presidential elections. But he doesn’t seem to be aware of it. Even...
These acts and policy decisions are proof enough that he has the will to make them. But it has since become clear that these were made with hardly any understanding of, or regard for, the consequences — and without any preparation or plan in place to cushion their impact on the little that’s left of Philippine democracy, the country’s institutions, and even on much of the population.
They have created another universe as false as their glowing descriptions of their own dynastic rule. The “new republic” was Marcos’s version. The “strong state” was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s — and the country where “change has come” that of Duterte’s.
They said they weren’t pressured — nor, presumably, bought and paid-for, promised any favors or gifts, or intimidated — to make it. But the call by some judges, lawyers, and Supreme Court employees for Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno to resign so obviously...
The International Criminal Court (ICC) isn’t as useless as President Rodrigo Duterte described it when he learned it was looking into the possibility of prosecuting him for crimes against humanity. But the ICC record over the last 16 years since it was established...
Former chief justice Reynato Puno says this is the “better time” to shift to a federal form of government. He didn’t say what he was comparing today with (a better time than when?). But he did claim that it’s because there’s enough public support to realize it....
President Rodrigo Duterte’s admission that he’s a dictator, and his obvious pride in that fact, were premised on at least three assumptions. The first is that his dictatorship has achieved something praiseworthy and beneficial to this country and its people. The...
The admonition that University of the Philippines students shouldn't be protesting in the streets but should instead be in their classrooms, and that by doing the first they're wasting the people's money, UP being a state university supported by their taxes, has...
“The best in the world” was how former chief justice Hilario Davide, Jr. described during a Senate hearing the 1987 Philippine Constitution that he and other members of the Constitutional Commission created by then president Corazon Aquino drafted. The description...
Any regime that calls itself democratic would have erred on the side of press freedom and free expression if there were any doubts about a media organization’s non-compliance with the law, or would have allowed it to make the necessary corrections. Not only are...
Almost every Philippine regime since that of Diosdado Macapagal has at least paid lip service to ending the poverty that in varying degrees of intensity haunts this country and millions of its people. Macapagal saw poverty as the legacy of the unfinished Revolution...
A plot is afoot to stop the holding of the 2019 midterm elections. But that already base scheme doesn’t stop there. Once constitutional amendments are approved, or a new constitution is in place, during the transition period to a federal form of government the...
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