Category: Politics

Party List Coalition Will Continue To be Weak With Cong. Mikee Romero

June 19, 2019June 19, 2019 P. Farol 4 Comments

Honestly, I was a bit intrigued by the development that Party Lists had formed a coalition amongst themselves. But, upon seeing that billionaire Congressman Mikee Romero was its president, I had to dismiss it as another PR gimmick that merely aims to project Romero’s non-existent stature among his party list peers. It’s not an altogether…

Politics

Cong. Mikee Romero Demands 20 percent of House Committee Chairmanships for Partylist Coalition

June 18, 2019June 18, 2019 P. Farol 3 Comments

I’ve been an observer of leadership contests in the House of Representatives for a little over two decades now and I can tell you that gathering signatures of support or claims of party coalitions are pretty much exercises with psychological warfare. Infact, things only firm up during the last few days of before the opening…

Politics

Mikee Romero’s Party List Block is Really a Selfish Bid for Majority Leader

June 17, 2019June 17, 2019 P. Farol 3 Comments

A Palace insider tells me that when President Rodrigo Duterte said that the Party list system was evil, he was actually referring to Congressman Mikee Romero of 1-Pacman Party list — a party list that’s one would assume should be composed of poor and struggling athletes at the very least. “They stayed for a while…

Politics

Heads-up: The One-China Policy could soon include Palawan and Singapore

June 15, 2019 zaxx 7 Comments

While our senators will soon be out in the public square basking in free-media-mileage limelight debating over whether China is friend or foe after that (in Mar’s terminology) unfortunate “mis-encounter” in the sea that left a hapless Penoy-powered Pinoy boat sinking after getting rammed by a Chinese vessel, right under their noses is Mainland China…

Development, Government, Politics

“Bahala Na Si Tatay Digong” road to the House Speakership

June 10, 2019June 10, 2019 P. Farol 3 Comments

Last night I posted about the dinner conversation I had with friends over at the House of Representatives where in we did the best we can to come up with a plausible guess as to who’d become House Speaker. At one point in the conversation, we found ourselves amused by the prospect of Taguig Representative…

Politics

Martin Romualdez Trump Alan Peter Cayetano’s bid for House Speaker

June 9, 2019 P. Farol 4 Comments

When friends from the House of Representatives invited me over for a dinner of crispy fried pig face (they call it Kapalmuks) at Pepeton’s on Panay Avenue, I didn’t hesitate to say YES. First, it has been a long while since I saw these friends of mine face to face and second, discussing politics with…

Politics

House Speaker of the Philippines, Romualdez, Cayetano, or Velasco?

June 3, 2019 P. Farol 2 Comments

Among the names put forward for House Speaker, it seems the most prominent ones are those of Leyte Representative Martin Romualdez and former Foreign Secretary now Taguig Representative Alan Peter Cayetano. The question that most people will be wrestling with till June 30 or the start of the 18th Congress is, who will win the…

Politics

You don’t need “Big Data” and “woke” culture to predict election outcomes in the Philippines

May 29, 2019May 31, 2019 benign0 6 Comments

There are two key things Americans learned from the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in 2016: (1) traditional pre-election polling is no longer reliable and (2) Google search activity provides better insight into voter preferences than social media engagement. That these lessons were mainly learned in hindsight accounts for much of the shock everyone felt…

Culture, Politics, Society