We beg to differ.
In his Inquirer piece “Media, politics, and foreign relations”, columnist Randy David illuminates the recent media re-circus surrounding President Bongbong Marcos’s alleged history of drug use… It must have taken no small amount of pressure by the former president to get [Senator Ronald “Bato”] Dela Rosa, his erstwhile police chief, to initiate an investigation into…
In his piece today “A discomforting realization about democracy”, Inquirer columnist Manuel L Quezon III ponders the “formerly unthinkable” — that given the way things have come down over the last few months that the administration of Philippine President Bongbong Marcos “represents the democratic center in our national life. And may do so, for the…
Read More “Duterte dynasty being progressively torn down by Marcos-Romualdez juggernaut!” »
The Philippine Senate is a political institution that was created during the American occupation years. Also called “the upper house”, the Senate is a legislative body that can be traced back to the Philippine Commission, which was created to assist the Americans in administering government powers in the Philippines. According to the 1987 Constitution, the…
Read More “The Senate: a political institution that lost its luster” »
Election fever in the Philippines is slowly heating up. Early opinion polls suggest that Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte, is the leading possible candidate for President in 2022. “Inday Sara,” as the lady mayor is widely known, is, so far, enjoying a comfortable lead over her potential opponents, including Vice…
Richard Javad Heydarian has a fondness for historical context in relation to present-day situations. In his Inquirer piece “Why do we love dictators?” he laments how, “across the postcolonial world, where the pandemic has been most devastating, it seems many people can’t still shake off their collective fascination with despots, even the most tragically disastrous…
Read More “35 years of democracy has not freed Filipinos from entrenched oligarchic feudal rule” »
For a political and social scientist, Professor Antonio Contreras surely is naive. But he can also be pragmatic when it comes to his own self-promotion. Borderline personality disorder? Maybe. In his Manila Times piece he rails against the “dirty politics” of these times… Popular culture has reinforced the image of politics as devoid of virtue….
Read More “Lack of a strong national identity makes for dog-eat-dog Philippine politics” »
The idea of legislating against “political dynasties” is ludicrous in a democracy such as the Philippines. For one thing (and, perhaps, the only thing), leaders and representatives in the Executive and Legislative branches of government respectively are elected by popular vote. This means that the people who make up the government are largely the outcome…
A Piece of Chalk Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg is one of the deepest and most original thinkers in modern physics. His research has mostly been in the theory of elementary particles and the related quantum theory of fields, together with occasional forays into cosmology. One thing I like about Weinberg is that he’s not…