We beg to differ.
As much of the Philippines belatedly comes to terms with the enormity of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is, to be fair, important that quick and strong measures be implemented to contain the disease. A Code Red Sub-Level 2 alert has been raised by the Philippine government which when implemented restricts movement out of and into…
The No Single Driver rule. It’s the bane of the miniscule minority of Filipino private motorists who can afford to tool around Metro Manila alone in their own personal cars. With the implementation today of this rule along EDSA today, one can expect only a small proportion of EDSA users to be up in arms….
Gated communities, like jeepneys, are stopgap measures that became institutionalised and so ingrained in the national psyche that, as we see in the general tone of the debate surrounding this issue, people simply find it next to impossible to comprehend the cancerous nature of their existence. They are legacies of a succession of weak and…
Read More “Manila’s gated communities should be opened to public access to alleviate traffic” »
Al Jazeera features in its ‘People and Power’ programme the video clip Begging for Life, a look into the lives of street children who make a living begging on the streets of Manila. The video is noteworthy because it captured eyewitness accounts of the roundup of street urchins conducted by the Philippine government in and…
The deadline for the completion of the LRT (Light Rail Transit) Line 1 project (Baclaran to Bacoor) by the end of 2015 has passed and the promise issued by President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III that he and Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) Secretary Jun Abaya back in 2013 will throw themselves under a…
Read More “Filipinos need to uphold a Deliver-Or-Die ethic like the Japanese” »
Thousands of squatters (informal settlers) are fleeing the Philippine capital to move back to their provinces. Half of the squatter population decides to stick it out though, maintaining their stand to stay in their illegal settlements all over the metropolis. Yet through the months, squatter colonies are dwindling in number, slowly becoming virtual ghost towns….
Read More “Landless in My Own Land – What’s the Solution to Metro Manila’s Squatter Menace?” »
The recently-concluded Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Metro Manila proved that to get the best results out of the Philippines’ premiere metropolis, its residents need to be excluded from major events like these. This is quite ironic considering the theme of APEC Manila 2015 was inclusion — getting as many ordinary Filipinos in…
Horror traffic gridlock stories juxtaposed with VIP lanes through which APEC bigwigs zip by smoothly have been flooding social media timelines over the last couple of days. Accompanying the images, memes, and footage depicting this horror are ordinary Filipinos’ complaints. And they are pouring in by the bucket loads. The key argument used by people…
Read More “Why Filipinos should complain about inconveniences caused by #APEC2015” »