By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star The Supreme Court has acquitted itself by resoundingly, citing clearcut legal arguments, declaring the pork barrel unconstitutional. Voting unanimously (with one abstention), the tribunal thus reversed its two previous rulings on the issue in 1994 and 2012. At bottom, the Court’s decision announced last…
Category: Contributions
Looking for the government
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Vice-President Jejomar Binay is right. This is not the time for finger-pointing — at least not yet. The people of the provinces that have been devastated by typhoon Yolanda have to be helped, and helped quickly. As soon as the situation stabilizes, however, blaming whoever contributed to…
Slow coping with disaster
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star A week after supertyphoon “Yolanda” swooshed in and devastated a wide swath of the islands of Samar, Leyte, and Panay (Iloilo, Capiz, and Aklan), one gets this impression from media reports: as swift and widespread as the destruction was, the government’s response has been…
Disaster watch
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld To the disasters that have struck the Philippines this year, the latest being typhoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan), the Philippine media have responded not only with regular, often by-the-hour reports, but also with the background material needed to enable their audiences to better understand why disasters happen…
Fr. Jose ‘Joe’ P. Dizon activist priest (1948-2013)
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld “Sandigan ang masa; paglingkuran ang sambayanan.” (Rely on the masses; serve the people.) These words of Fr. Jose “Joe” P. Dizon at the celebration of his 40th year as a priest (for the most part assigned to the diocese of Imus, Cavite) sums up his life-long mantra as an…
His loyal ‘opposition’
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada is one of three senators of the Republic — the two others are former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Ramon Revilla Jr. — being investigated by the ombudsman for possible complicity in the vast conspiracy to defraud the Filipino people through the theft…
Pope Francis
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld A gust of fresh air is sweeping through the centuries-old, grandiose but encrusted and musty environs of Vatican City with the arrival of a new Pope elected just seven months ago. Pope Francis, or the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is the new Bishop of Rome. He establishes several…
His own man
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld The claim that it’s not Benigno Aquino III who really wants to keep the pork barrel system intact, either by renaming it or by insisting that discretionary funds are not part of it, is straight out of the Marcos period. Then it was Imelda Marcos who was…
Erring big US banks settle cases through fines
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Coincidental with the cliff-hanging negotiations in Washington, which ended on October 17 with the Obama administration defeating the House of Representatives in their standoff on funding the federal government and raising its borrowing limit, was another deal-making that settled the legal and regulatory woes…
Spy agencies’ accountability
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star This week two dramatic events, both with worldwide implications, played out in the capitals of the United States and the United Kingdom. In Washington, the issue was how to resolve the standoff between the Obama administration and the House of Representatives over 1) federal…
Message to Aquino
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Did we get that right? Was Benigno Aquino III blaming the Arroyo regime for the 15% drop in his September approval ratings? Mr. Aquino blames his predecessor’s administration for the corruption that has metastasized in the public sector, the poverty that afflicts millions of Filipinos, and the…