We beg to differ.
Too many colours. Too many symbols. Too many sound bytes. Philippine politics is framed by the clever work of public relations (PR) consultants who craft poetic messages that extend strong emotional hooks that the public readily bites. Because of the potent emotional payload of the messaging that makes up the bulk of the campaign rhetoric…
Read More “Filipinos need to modernise their primitive politics” »
You may recall I earlier wrote something on the NFL asking questions about individual teams that will be answered when play begins for the 2018 regular season. I think now that week 9 is over, it is a good time to revisit those questions and speculate what might happen in the second half of the…
Essentially, a politician’s job is to convince his constituents to buy into his words. This usually involves convincing the voters that he best has their interests in mind. Or to be blunt about it, that his self-interests most closely align with their concerns. As I pointed out from the start of president Rodrigo Duterte’s term,…
Read More “The difference between Duterte’s words and the Opposition’s” »
It’s no wonder the Philippine Opposition led by the Liberal Party (a.k.a. the Yellowtards) and the commies continue to fail at recapturing the loyalties of the vast base of voters they lost back in 2016. As hard as they try, they are unable to shake off the elitist image they inadvertently project as an ironic…
Rappler CEO Maria Ressa just can’t stop once she gets started about Facebook. Indeed, she got started on Facebook way back when she threw a massive embrace around the gargantuan social media platform in the early days when she pitched her organisation as a “social news network”. Like many media organisations at the time, Rappler…
Read More “Maria Ressa’s obsession with Facebook is like that of a jilted lover over her ex” »
One would say it is a tried-and-tested set of platitudes that serves as no-brainer fodder for a political campaign in the Philippines. But the whole narrative of “sacrificing”, “pro-poor”, and “championing the weak” personas has lately been taking a beating in the public debate. Recent polls indicate that the methods being applied by the government…
Read More “The Philippine Opposition needs to get a new set of campaign slogans” »
Supporters of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte may see House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s decision to push for the withdrawal of the Philippines from the Inter Parliamentary Union as proof her strong alliance with the current administration, but I see it as the only correct stand against the meddling of this international lawmakers’ body with our…
Read More “Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo Defends The Country From IPU Meddling” »
The seeming aversion of Filipinos to large-scale infrastructure projects — the sorts needed to achieve the vast economies of scale needed to compete in the global market likely stems from the Filipinos’ heritage of smallness. This prescient snippet quoted from Nick Joaquin’s seminal piece describes the underlying character of Philippine culture that is at the…
Read More “Filipinos need to get better at killing in order to prosper” »
