We beg to differ.
Australian morning show Sunrise featured a segment on presumptive Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to discuss his win in the recent presidential elections. The show had an Australian political analyst named Dr Keith Suter as guest who speculated on what a Duterte President would be like. Even before he was introduced, the two hosts of the…
Now that the smoke belched by Election 2016 has cleared people seem to be reflecting on what just happened. It seems some of them have taken to taking stock of the social media landscape to try to make sense of and possibly shed light into what exactly got into Filipino voters’ heads. The underlying thinking…
Read More “Philippine blogging and social media in the time of President Rodrigo Duterte” »
It no longer needs highlighting that Filipinos are now doing the right thing and embracing the leadership of President-Elect Rodrigo Duterte with open minds and a renewed hope in real change being implemented over the next six years. The reason Filipinos seem more inclined to take the journey together this time is that Duterte had…
Read More “Filipinos may finally see true ‘unity’ under a Duterte presidency” »
With Mayor Rody Duterte’s trail-blazing ascent to the presidency, we may have to rewrite the books on the ins and outs of politics in the country. He was from a marginalized region of the country way down South with a thick Visayan accent, had no pocket money of his own to launch a national campaign, came into…
Read More “Five Routes to the Presidency in the Philippines” »
In 2002, Time magazine published an article calling Rodrigo Duterte “The Punisher”(1). He gained popularity with the people of Davao, a huge city in Mindanao at the time beleaguered by two groups of insurgents, diehard communists and Muslim radicals, due to his “zero tolerance” for criminality and corruption. He was very successful in cleaning up…
Who would have thought that the late former ambassador Roy Señeres, who withdrew from the presidential race shortly before his death last February would affect the Presidential Elections conducted on the 9th of May? It seems dead people have a way of “influencing” Philippine politics. We all know that incumbent President Benigno Simeon Aquino only got…
Read More “Did Smartmatic help the Liberal Party rig the 2016 Philippine Presidential Elections?” »
Okay, before I begin, I’d like to note that I’m writing this as a reaction to the way President Aquino and many of his allies in the LP seem to brand people they don’t like as “Nazis”. Indeed, when the president (and soon to be former president) went to Japan, he called the occupying Chinese forces in the…
Read More “3 Uncomfortable Similarities Between President Noynoy Aquino And Adolf Hitler” »
I recently shared my colleague Benign0’s article on my Facebook wall regarding his critique on Leni Robredo supporters seeing their bet as their last bastion of hope for the dying yellow anti-Marcos glib. A good friend of mine told me that Benign0’s observation for the demographic of Robredo’s followers can similarly be used for Duterte’s…