Last week, in the nth attempt over the last 29 years, proponents of a national identification system managed to get the House of Representatives to approve a bill instituting such a system in the country: 142 voted yes, only seven (the Makabayan bloc) voted no. In May 2015 the House passed a similar bill, but…
I wrote this piece for two reasons. Firstly, to honor, once more, persons I have known who lived simply and with deep dedication to serving the interest and welfare of the common people. Secondly, to turn away our minds, even for only a while, from the grisly and condemnable fascist/gangland-style killings – especially of our…
The current administration…has not only inherited an accumulation of problems [social, economic, and political] but has adopted and implemented policies that aggravate these problems. It is widely perceived that the Philippine ruling system is inexorably following a course of degeneration and disintegration.” “There is growing militarization of the political system. The total war policy continues…
President Duterte is turning more and more confrontational towards mounting criticisms and protest actions against his government’s bloody war on drugs, war against the Maute Group in Marawi, extended martial law declaration in Mindanao, “all-out war” against the New People’s Army, and his declared abandonment of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. His remarks on alleged threats…
Of course, during the presidential campaign last year he already talked in a favorable light about martial law and expressed sheer admiration for the deposed dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos. But did anyone anticipate that within his first six months in office, President Duterte would facilitate Marcos’ political rehabilitation by allowing the burial of his remains…
President Duterte was more combative during his second state-of-the-nation address last Monday than was during his first SONA. Venting on his prime advocacy, the fight against illegal drugs, and against a wide range of perceived enemies and critics, he came out raising both fists. Last year, in contrast, he extended a hand of friendship and…
Acute income and economic inequality, the negative phenomenon spawned by neoliberal economics, continues to widen worldwide. Wealth gets concentrated, in scandalous scale, in the hands of the few super-rich, depriving billions of the poor all over the world sufficient means to survive. World Bank-International Monetary Fund designed policies/programs pursued by governments to achieve “sustainable and…
It’s one magistrate’s opinion against those of his 11, or 14, other colleagues. And it’s a much younger voice arguing with the many older ones who have presumably spent more years than him in thinking about the law. Yet Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen stood his ground as the lone full dissenter to…
President Duterte’s oft-repeated avowal is to accomplish before the end of his six-year term, in 2022, a shift in the form of government from the present unitary to a federal system. That accomplished, he has declared, he will volunteer to resign as President. And he has kept saying that only such a shift to federalism…
As the “war against terrorists” in Marawi City under martial law conditions in Mindanao enters its fifth week, a grave humanitarian crisis looms. Meantime, conflicting signals from President Duterte and the Armed Forces of the Philippines continue to baffle the public. On the one hand, the AFP claimed its troops have cornered the terrorists, consisting…
Yes…! The ball is rolling forward again, though slowly, for the GRP-NDFP peace talks. Both parties are moving cautiously but expressing determination to pursue and achieve their agreed-on targets, following the unprecedented progress racked up in the first three rounds of formal negotiations. As narrated in this space last week, the GRP panel interdicted the…