By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld There are two things that the common tao considers as indicators, if not necessary proof, that our political system is a democracy. The first is national elections. The second is the Philippine Congress. When Ferdinand E. Marcos decided to suspend both in 1972, there was no doubt in the…
Category: Streetwise
Lumad killings and counterinsurgency
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld Today, September 21, we commemorate the anniversary of the Dictator Marcos’ declaration of martial law and say “Never again!” This constitutes our collective denunciation of the evils spawned by 14 years of the brutally repressive, thieving and lying US-backed Marcos dictatorship. It is also a call to action to…
Lumad in Mindanao under attack
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld James Cameron’s 2009 box-office hit film Avatar, about an alien world where primitive but highly evolved inhabitants defend their habitat, moved audiences across the globe, including the Filipino urbanite audience. We were enthralled by the lush and luminescent world of beings who end up waging a kind of asymmetrical…
Foreign mining companies vs global social movements
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld In the last two decades, the global mining industry has tried to repair its image and whitewash its blackened record in the wake of public furor over mine “accidents” and stiff resistance by mining communities to their operations. It has launched a coordinated, well-funded, and sustained public relations campaign…
Aquino seeks to define his administration’s legacy. But what legacy?
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld This year’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) is President B. S. Aquino III’s last. He is expected to deliver a powerful speech replete with his regime’s achievements for the last five years with a summation of the legacy he will leave behind. Speculation is rife, less than a…
The only deterrent to China’s aggression: Taking a cue from Vietnam
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld In recent months, China’s flurry of reclamation work and building of military installations on several of the islets and reefs in the disputed portions of the West Philippine Sea/South China Sea have set alarm bells ringing about China’s aggressive design to claim almost the entirety of the area as…
How to water down an already watered-down Bangsamoro Basic Law
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld Malacañang’s damage-control measures for the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) after the Mamasapano fiasco is going full throttle. No less than President Benigno S. C. Aquino has applied carrot-and-stick pressure tactics on his congressional allies. This has resulted in the passage of the latest Malacañang-stamped version by the House ad…
Ordinary people stand up for their rights
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld Celia and Cesar Veloso are admirable parents who wouldn’t give up the fight to bring their daughter, condemned overseas Filipino worker Mary Jane, back to the Philippines – alive, safe and free — against seemingly insurmountable odds. They were up against an international drug syndicate, recruiting poor and desperate…
Mary Jane Veloso is Flor Contemplacion 2
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld The story of Mary Jane Veloso is Flor Contemplacion Part II but for the much happier ending: her execution by firing squad for drug trafficking having been held in abeyance by Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo at the eleventh hour. In the case of Contemplacion, which by the way happened…
The personal is political
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld Readers of this 10-something-year-old column have likely observed that the essays I write are mostly political in nature; an outcome of my being a social activist from way back when. But once in a rare while and for good reason, the theme becomes more personal. Then again as the…
Aquino’s ‘last word’ on Mamasapano, the writing on the wall?
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld President Benigno S. C. Aquino III’s speech at the PNPA graduation was meant to write finis to the public uproar over the bloody, botched counterterrorist operation in Mamasapano, Maguindanao. Instead it only managed to further rile a people sick and tired of the finger-pointing, the obfuscation and lies about…