We beg to differ.
A bookkeeper of noted Philippine NGO Visayan Forum Foundation (VFF) blew the whistle on its founder Cecilia Flores-Oebanda. Maria Analie Villacorte who, according to VFF attorney Laurence Arroyo, resigned from the VFF last July alleges she received instructions from Oebanda to “falsify” documents that would have been used to support the disbursement of up to…
The National Statistical Coordination Board of the Philippine Government announced today that the Philippine economy grew 5.9 percent in the three months to the end of June 2012 over the same period in the previous year. Several news reports credited increased spending by the government and favourable perception created by the “anti-corruption” drive of Philippine…
Read More “BusinessWeek cites Aquino anti-corruption drive in 2Q growth report” »
I keep reading about people proposing sensible and obvious things to combat the biggest problems we face today, like controlling (and maybe even reducing) population, reducing carbon emissions, and voting for the best leader. All sounds like the ‘intelligent’ things to do, don’t they? But all that is just asking too much when you consider…
Read More “Are the obvious solutions to the Philippines’ problems feasible?” »
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…
Read More “It’s about time the Philippine government blasts squatters out of the water” »
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…
Read More “RH Bill ‘debate’: When Tito Sotto says ‘jump’ Filipinos ask ‘How high?’” »
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…
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…
Read More “Is PNoy to blame for the recent flooding in Luzon?” »
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…
Read More “Metro Manila a candidate for urban ‘catastrophic failure’ according to policy expert” »