The Supreme Court decision upholding the right of CHED Sec. Romulo Neri and Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to invoke executive privilege did not serve the cause of justice and truth. It helped conceal a crime, added to the cracks in the institutions of government, and left the nation more deeply divided. BY BENJIE OLIVEROS ANALYSIS Bulatlat…
Category: Bulatlat Perspective
People Power Fatigue?
The Arroyo government and its allies say that the Filipino people are tired of people power. Does this mean that the Filipino people are tired of condemning massive electoral fraud, putting a stop to extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, resisting repression, fighting corruption, struggling against hunger and poverty? That is wishful thinking on the part…
The Queen’s Gambit
The Arroyo government seems to have blundered in handling Rodolfo Lozada Jr. from the day the Senate summoned him to testify in a hearing on the NBN-ZTE deal. But the Macapagal-Arroyo administration’s actions concerning Lozada were done with due consideration of the probable consequences to the government. It was all part of the queen’s gambit.…
Impunity and Dictatorship
The way the Macapagal-Arroyo administration disposed of an ally former House Speaker Jose De Venecia, and kidnapped a government official Rodolfo Jun Lozada reek of impunity. And impunity, if left unchecked, would usher in a full-blown dictatorship. BY BENJIE OLIVEROS ANALYSIS Bulatlat Vol VIII, No. 2, February 10-16, 2008 When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her…
Governance by Arrogance
Next to the Marcos dictatorship, the Arroyo presidency will likely go down in history as the government most vilified apparently due to its use of coercion and intimidation to silence its critics and its presumed enemies. BY THE CENTER FOR PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT IN GOVERNANCE Posted by Bulatlat ANALYSIS Vol. VIII, No. 2, February 10-16, 2008…
Bishops’ Call for Peace Rejected by Military
The bishops want peace, but the military seems to want something else. By GERRY ALBERT CORPUZ Posted by Bulatlat ANALYSIS Vol. VIII, No. 2, February 10-16, 2008 The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) last week called on the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) to resume peace talks. It…
Philippine Bureaucracy: Bloated and Corrupted
Most bureaucrats see their positions as both a power and a privilege shielded by immunities instead of as a public service that involves accountability. BY THE CENTER FOR PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT AND GOVERNANCE Posted by Bulatlat Vol. VII, No. 1, February 3-9,2008 Ed San Pedro (not his real name) had served five presidents, from Ferdinand E.…
Not Funny Anymore
It’s just like a scene in a cartoon where the characters stumble on one another in a comic display of ineptness. After bungling the handling of the investigation of the Glorietta 2 explosion, and the siege of the Manila Peninsula during the Trillanes-Lim standoff, the Philippine National Police (PNP) has once again showed its programmed…
Vying for the Presidency in 2010
Glossed over in the frenzy to see who the leading presidentiables are is what political agenda they are bringing into this race for power, what they stand for with regard to issues most urgent to the people, and who the probable major beneficiaries are from their candidacies. The electorate deserves no less than the whole…
The Promises of EDSA
After two People Power uprisings, how far have we gone in the struggle for good governance, for democracy, and for a better life and future? BY BENJIE OLIVEROS ANALYSIS Bulatlat Vol. VII, No. 49, January 20-26, 2008 EDSA 2 is about the struggle for good governance and the rejection of a corrupt government. It is…
Another Jab at Civil Liberties
In late 2005 up to 2006 the Arroyo government tried to curtail the freedom of speech and assembly through the Calibrated Preemptive Response, silence the media through the issuance of guidelines by the PNP, and twist and bend its laws and legal procedures to run after its critics especially from the legal Left. It also…