How do you regard today’s observance of the peaceful people’s uprising that led to the ouster of the Marcos martial law dictatorship in February 1986? Three separate activities mark this year’s observance: each one representing a different perspective of those dramatic events that caught the attention of the world. Tellingly perhaps, the Malacanang-led rites will…
Controversy has greeted Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Gina Lopez’s successive orders – cancelling the contracts/permits of 23 mining firms in operation (out of 41), suspending five others for six months, and cancelling the contracts on 75 projects that have not yet begun. She issued the orders after a month-long audit of the…
President Duterte’s four-day blustering last week – withdrawing the government’s unilateral ceasefire, “cancelling” the GRP-NDFP peace talks, ordering the re-arrest of 17 NDFP consultants released in August to join the peace negotiations, and tagging as “terrorists” the CPP-NPA and NDFP – has upended his previous stance (in the first six months of his term) of…
On his seventh month in office President Duterte has come to the crucial stages of his two major initiatives and campaign promises: resume and pursue the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, and put an end to the illegal drugs problem. And on both issues he ought to respond, not with his signature brashness and truculence, but with…
Negotiate in a non-adversarial way. Resolve differences and overcome obstacles. Focus on the substantial agenda of social, economic and political reforms that address the root causes of the armed conflict and thus move decisively forward to a just and lasting peace. Invoking these vital principles, the two panels in the revived GRP-NDFP peace talks under…
In his farewell speech on Tuesday, US President Barack Obama tried to project confidence in America’s future, while saying economic inequality, racism, and closed-mindedness threaten national unity. He pledged to support his successor, Donald Trump, in face of the widespread fears expressed over how the volatile political outlier could mishandle the superpower’s problems and affairs.…
President Duterte enters the second half of his first year in office unrelentingly pursuing his bloody war on illegal drugs, which during the electoral campaign he had promised to complete in six months. The fulfillment of another campaign promise has now been added to that: weeding out corruption in government. Comes now the disclosure by…
Perish the thought! You’re playing a perilous game!! Verily that is the singular message addressed to both President Rodrigo Roa Duterte and Donald J. Trump, the incoming president of the United States, regarding their recent statements that beclouded the holiday atmosphere: Duterte’s on removing the constitutional safeguards on declaring martial law, and Trump’s on reviving…
At the onset of the Christmas and New Year holidays, probably the gladdest and most welcome news, particularly for poor families, is that for at least 1.4 million students in 114 state universities and colleges (SUCs) across the nation, tuition will be free in 2017. An editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer notes that the…
Jovito R. Salonga, former Senate president and elder statesman, led the 2016 batch of 19 heroes and martyrs whose names were engraved on the Wall of Remembrance at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City last Nov. 30. He had been the moving spirit behind the Bantayog, established 30 years ago to recognize and…
The title of this piece comes from an article by the British investigative journalist, writer and documentary maker Nicholas Davies, titled “The $10-bn question: what happened to the Marcos millions?” It was published in the Guardian on May 7, 2016, two days before the national elections in which Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. emerged a close…