The United People’s SONA will call Duterte to account for failing to fulfill his campaign promises: to end labor contractualization, uplift the dire conditions of the poor, and pursue peace negotiations to their logical conclusion by addressing the root causes of the armed conflict.
Regular readers of the Philippine STAR have surely taken note of this paper’s series of editorials this week (the first week of President Duterte’s third year in office) dwelling on impunity and the rising cycle of violence in the country. Let’s review the key points raised by two of the editorials. On July 2 the…
Today marks the completion of President Duterte’s first two years in office. The two years are capped by controversies over multiple issues that have been stirred by his cuss-laden off-the-cuff speeches which his administration minions, often than not, pick up as the crux or elements of Executive policy. His “erratic and crass leadership style” –…
For now it looks like the fifth formal round of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations under the current administration – bilaterally set for June 28-30 but unilaterally postponed indefinitely by President Duterte on June 14 – may be resumed after three months. That is, in the last quarter of this year. In the meantime, the two…
In April, President Duterte called for resuming the GRP-NDFP peace talks he had arbitrarily “terminated” in November. Saying it’s the “last chance” for achieving peace with the Left revolutionary movement, he gave the two sides 60 days to undertake informal/backchannel discussions to pave the ground for the fifth round of formal negotiations, which he had…
It was “pure showbiz,” meant to entertain the crowd of Filipino expatriates who had been gathered to meet him in Seoul after his arrival there last Sunday, on an official visit to South Korea. That’s how President Duterte initially explained why he had called to the stage (where he was speaking) two women in the…
President Duterte’s speech last Wednesday at the change-of-command ceremony of the Presidential Security Command at Malacanang Park carried a sense of lightness, even of goodwill throughout. He let out his usual curse only once, in passing reference to illegal drug users (durugistas). But what I particularly noticed in the speech was that, as he greeted…
May 23, 2017 marked the beginning of two catastrophes that befell the people of Mindanao; one year later, the harsh impact on their daily lives and the profound trauma in their individual and collective psyche seem far from being assuaged. First, there was the so-called siege of Marawi City, a nearly-five-month war between the state…
Two weeks before he died unexpectedly last Sunday, Edgardo J. Angara, former president of the Senate and the University of the Philippines, who will be interred in his hometown Baler tomorrow, shared some food for thought about the qualities of a national leader and about President Rodrigo R. Duterte. Speaking at the National Defense College,…
On May 8, President Donald Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from a 2015 agreement between six major nations and Iran – called the “Iran deal” for short – aimed at ensuring that Iran wouldn’t develop a nuclear weapon, in exchange for lifting sanctions that for 12 years had stifled that country’s economic growth. Trump’s…
On May 7-18, the Duterte government will engage in its third Balikatan joint military exercises with the United States since October 2016. The exercises will have two new features: 1) participation of Japan and Australia, both America’s close cohorts in Asia and, 2) the start of construction, inside a Philippine base, of the first of…