We beg to differ.
The eminent Inquirer columnist Cielito Habito in a recent piece wrote about the “self-destruction” of the Philippine Senate. Habito laments the plight of an institution the integrity of which took “decades to build” only for a majority bloc of 13 senators led by Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano to “ruin it” in “just three days”….
Today, Filipinos once again troop to the polls to participate in Philippine democracy’s most festive tradition. Without even being deep enough into the details of the who’s who among the choices and the what’s what of the “issues” at stake, it is easy to predict what the outcome of all this means to the average…
Read More “Why Philippine elections are like NAIA departure area bollards” »
Yellowtard “social news network” Rappler continues to flail over the gutting of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) by US President Donald Trump. Gaby Baizas, a “digital forensics researcher” there insists in her piece “The lies, attacks on USAID spreading in the Philippines” that “USAID has been providing humanitarian aid to several countries,…
Philippine electoral politics are back to plumbing an all-too-familiar theme — preventing a [insert bogeyman’s name here] win. The spectre of three Dutertes in the Senate has been the subject of furious chatter amongst the intelligentsia over the last couple of weeks since Vice President Sara Duterte dropped hints that her father, former President Rodrigo…
It is easy to tell that Fiesta Election season in the Philippines is just around the corner. There is ayuda talk aplenty with one or the other politician “pushing” one “initiative” or the other to “alleviate” the “plight” of “the poor”. Many of these are initiatives are well within the power of administrators of various…
Read More “In a society where the majority is comprehension-challenged, should majority rule?” »
In his recent piece “Ideology, anyone?”, Manila Standard columnist Lito Banayo hits upon a key reason why we are not as progressive as our ASEAN neighbors. Banayo gets to the core of why the “Unity” theme of the current administration of President Bongbong Marcos (PBbM) is in a death spiral sharing a conversation he picked…
What did we learn from the extra-judicial ouster of an elected president? The 1987 Constitution? Our generation was fooled into believing that the late former President Ferdinand E. Marcos was evil and the late former President Cory Aquino who seized power from him in 1986 was a saint. We were naive then but for those…
What really matters to most ordinary people? Simple. Food, security, and certainty. In a Third World “democracy” such as the Philippines, most successful politicians are able to distil their messaging down to what ticks those three boxes. Taking this perspective, it is easy to see how former President Rodrigo Duterte sustained his popularity, trust, and…
Read More “Marcostards or Dutertards could become the next Yellowtards. So don’t be a tard.” »