Tag: ferdinand marcos

Lack of a strong national identity makes for dog-eat-dog Philippine politics

May 29, 2021 Ramon Ortoll 8 Comments

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….

History, Politics

Oligarchs spawned by Spanish and American colonial masters at core of Philippine society ills

May 22, 2021May 22, 2021 Ramon Ortoll 2 Comments

A broken piece of ceramic material, specially one found in an archeological site. This is the definition of Sherds, which is also a novel by National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose. The novel is 12 chapters and short at 122 pages. It is really more a novelette. It has been a long time since…

Society

The Opposition wastes time lying to themselves and to Filipinos about history and about Duterte

May 21, 2021 Ramon Ortoll 1 Comment

The Opposition can’t disabuse themselves of the notion that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is a Chinese puppet. PhilSTAR columnist Boo Chanco, for example, is fixated on the concept as is evident in yet another one of his pieces, today’s “Is China losing Duterte” where he suggests that “China will likely finance a candidate next year….

History, Politics

The Politics of Business: an account of political persecution by Herminio Disini

May 20, 2021May 28, 2021 Ramon Ortoll 3 Comments

If you want to have an idea of how the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) was weaponized against the Marcos “cronies” you should read this book, The Politics of Business: How the Government Tried My Case Without Me, by none other than Herminio T. Disini. Disini begins with his origins in Narvacan, Ilocos Sur…

Business, Development

The time has come for Filipinos to consider a Bongbong Marcos presidency!

May 2, 2021May 2, 2021 benign0 33 Comments

Recall back to the twilight years of the presidency of former President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III. Back then, Aquino was so desperate to shore up the flagging political fortunes of his party that he would go as far as reminding Filipinos to stop referring to the regime of former President Ferdinand Marcos as the…

Politics, Religion

Martial Law is a hopeless he-said-she-said “issue” that only wastes our time

September 7, 2020 benign0 5 Comments

I just have to agree with what Kay Rivera wrote in her Inquirer column today… It frustrates me that we must continue to turn martial law into a he-said-she-said game of history of Marcos vs Aquino camps, a game of fallacies where condemning one must be tantamount to glorifying the other. As she asserts and…

Politics

Marcos Day represents the Filipino people’s moving on from a manufactured past

September 6, 2020September 6, 2020 benign0 15 Comments

When a small minority of “activists” continue to encourage Filipinos to latch on to the past and sustain a pathological anxiety about the future, you know there is something wrong. Even more wrong is when these shills conspire with Big Corporate Media to propagate their sick “cause”. Today’s Inquirer editorial, for example, cites, interestingly enough,…

Culture, Development, Politics

Battle of the Heroes: NAIA name change vs. Ferdinand Marcos Day

September 4, 2020 zaxx 6 Comments

Whether you refer to heroes here as with or without the quotation marks, “heroes” in the Philippines appear to be defined by how well you can get history to side on you. And what better way to do that than name recall? So for anyone wanting to be remembered as a hero, naming roads and…

History, Politics