Category: Development

It’s about time the Philippine government blasts squatters out of the water

August 14, 2012June 13, 2013 benign0 44 Comments

Apparently emboldened by the rising anger over the man-made nature of the massive floods that devastated much of Metro Manila last week and increasingly loud calls to rectify the problems related to it that politicians had allowed to fester for decades, President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III has issued a strong mandate for decisive action…

Development, Environment, Government, Society

RH Bill ‘debate’: When Tito Sotto says ‘jump’ Filipinos ask ‘How high?’

August 13, 2012 benign0 20 Comments

Whatever the content of Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto III’s anti-Reproductive Health Bill (RH Bill) speech broadcast via radio today was, the bottom line is quite simple: Tito Sotto is a celebrity. His impassioned speech delivered in Tagalog, the lingua franca of Philippine showbiz, will likely have resonated across the Filipino masses. Sure, he made debatable…

Culture, Development, Education, Lifestyle, Politics, Religion

Solution to Manila flooding may involve more of living with it than protecting against it

August 12, 2012June 13, 2013 benign0 29 Comments

Metro Manila is, by its very nature, a city vulnerable to flooding. Yet it has grown and developed into a monstrous megalopolis that, today, teeters on the brink of catastrophic failure. Manila is bisected by the Pasig River into which connect a system of natural waterways that both feed into it and absorb excess water…

Development, Environment, Government

Is PNoy to blame for the recent flooding in Luzon?

August 10, 2012June 13, 2013 Ilda 99 Comments

When former President Gloria Arroyo (GMA) was in power, people were quick to blame her government for what happened during the flooding brought about by typhoon Ondoy in September 2009. Yes, her government could have done more to prevent the flooding but the deluge brought forth by the rains induced by the storm that caused…

Development, Environment, Government, Politics

Metro Manila a candidate for urban ‘catastrophic failure’ according to policy expert

August 10, 2012 benign0 39 Comments

The virtue of ‘resilience’ has become a dirty word now in the Philippines as third-time unlucky Manila is again hit by another one of those “one-in-one-hundred” calamities that were once the key statistical notion underpinning urban planners’ archaic flood “control” master plans. Although response to the disaster has “improved”, the feel-good rhetoric around Filipinos’ cockroach-like…

Development, Environment, Government

Social Media and Big Telco emerge as Filipino heroes

August 9, 2012August 9, 2012 benign0 3 Comments

In another one of its infomercial articles that it would like to pass off to the average sucker as a news “report”, ABS-CBN trumpeted another one of those dubious “achievements” Filipinos owe mainly to their enormous population — our undisputed place in the global scheme of things as the “social media capital of the world”….

Development, Environment, Money Talks, Politics

Metro Manila had long ago set itself up for its own destruction by flooding

August 8, 2012 benign0 54 Comments

According to Mark McDonald in a New York Times blog post, the recent floods that hit Metro Manila this week “seem to have caused little public anger over further municipal dysfunction in the densely populated capital of more than 10 million” and that, instead, “Filipinos demonstrated a remarkable civic spirit as they shared news of…

Culture, Development, Government, Society

Metro Manila flood control master planning in chronic catch up mode over the last two decades!

August 8, 2012 benign0 12 Comments

Perhaps in this instance rather than refer to Philippine President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III by his catchy first two initials, he should instead be referred to as the ‘BT’ President — as in bad timing. Just two weeks before The Disaster that Could not be Named struck Manila and turned it into a real-life…

Development, Economy, Environment, Government