By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld As if to mock the memory of the 32 journalists and media workers who were among the 58 men and women killed on Nov. 23, 2009, during the Ampatuan Massacre (named after the town where it took place), the Philippine National Police (PNP) has prevented media coverage…
Category: Vantage Point
Politics, Ebola, and that visit to Caballo Island
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) or Ebola hemorrhagic fever, which the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as “a severe, often fatal illness in humans,” is not contagious until the infected person develops symptoms. But why take the unnecessary risk of infection anyway by socializing with the very…
Binay and Aquino: The ties that bind
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld So keenly anticipated by much of the media, the “break” between Vice-President Jejomar Binay and President Benigno Aquino III has not come to pass. On the contrary. Despite the attempts of the usual Binay opponents to downplay the subject (they didn’t talk about politics), the supposed awkwardness…
Binay in the best of both worlds
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Because he thinks his current problems are at least partly the doing of some Aquino administration personalities, among them his putative rival in 2016, Manuel Roxas II, Vice-President Jejomar Binay has criticized the administration of which he’s a part — in which he in fact occupies two…
A tale of two aliens
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld These are not the best of times, and this country is not the fun place the tourism posters say it is — not for many Filipinos who feel they’re getting poorer and poorer each day, not for human rights defenders or political activists who’re being harassed and…
Jennifer Laude, hate crimes, and the ‘big picture’
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Olongapo City prosecutor Emilie Fe de los Santos declared the other day during the preliminary investigation of the murder charge against Private First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton of the United States Marine Corps that “there is no gender issue” involved in the killing of Jennifer Laude. “The…
Understanding (and not just exposing) corruption
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld There might very well be a conspiracy afoot to prevent the election of Vice-President Jejomar Binay to the Presidency in 2016. It doesn’t release Binay from the responsibility of credibly answering the accusations that have been hurled against him. But neither should it prevent the media from…
Aquino and company’s real ‘bosses’
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld His numbers may be falling and those of one of his putative opponents rising, but Jejomar Binay is at this point still the leading candidate for the Presidency in 2016. Binay still topped the list of preferred presidential candidates in a Sept. 8 Pulse Asia survey despite…
Why the PNP chief must go
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Reacting to demands that he fire Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Alan Purisima for, among other reasons, the involvement of policemen in robberies, extortion, kidnapping, even murder and other crimes, President Benigno Aquino III declared that “there have always been ‘scalawags’ in the police.” That statement implied…
How the media can help end the debate over martial law
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Forty- two years have passed since Ferdinand Marcos placed the entire country under martial law on Sept. 23, 1972 (he signed Presidential Proclamation 1081 on Sept. 21, implementing it only two days later). But some Filipinos still argue that things were better during the dictatorship, while others…
Clueless in Brussels
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld In the course of his visit to several European countries, President Benigno Aquino III rejected, during a forum in Brussels, Belgium, what he called “blanket statements” — and proceeded to make some blanket statements of his own. Mr. Aquino was responding to the claims of protesters and…