We beg to differ.
This is a common argument against opinion pieces that point out confronting observations about the collective character of the Filipino nation. The reasoning can be re-worded as a question like this: When someone asserts, say, that Filipinos are slobs, is this an unfair statement? It isn’t if one recognises that this statement is a generalisation….
Read More “Don’t generalise, not all Filipinos are like that!” »
There are the hard realities and truths and then there are the democratic institutions built by a people who presumably aspire to live by said truths as closely as human thinking faculties permit. The trouble with the way Filipinos have applied their expensive Made-in-the-USA criminal justice system is that they did not put such a…
Read More “Imbeciles are exempt from criminal investigation in the Philippines” »
No traffic solution discussed or devised by authorities will ever work in the long term in the Philippines. Key words here are long term. Even if we magically managed to double, triple or quadruple our road space. Of that I am certain. Not in our lifetime anyway, although we have to keep trying out the…
‘A mountain had gone into labour and was groaning terribly. Such rumors excited great expectations all over the country. In the end, however, the mountain gave birth to a mouse.’ — Phaedrus Well… Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras didn’t exactly say it that way but that is the essence of what he said in a TV interview on…
Read More “Traffic Is Caused By High Car Sales Says Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras” »
Much has been said about the sad way Filipino politicians — particularly the top presidentiables of the moment: Mar Roxas, Grace Poe, and Jejomar Binay — clambered all over one another to suck up to the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC). The INC staged a rally last week that fouled up Metro Manila’s main road artery…
Peace and order is seen to be a priority feature of modern societies that is important enough to warrant drastic measures enshrined in a national Constitution to guarantee that these be maintained. When there is a breakdown of peace and order, the law allows the government to declare a state of emergency and undertake drastic…
Read More “Emergency powers needed to fix Manila’s traffic catastrophe!” »
Building a cult of personality. That is the last thing Pope Francis is likely to have wanted included in his agenda for his visit to the Philippines. The Pope said that his visit to the Philippines is about the poor and the victims of the two recent calamities that devastated the Philippines. To further punctuate…
Read More “Pope Francis’s over-the-top reception in the #Philippines” »
I don’t know what Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Francis Tolentino was thinking when he issued — and, worse, publicised — a directive to his legions of “traffic enforcers” to wear adult diapers while on duty during the visit of Pope Francis to the Philippines this month. He said there would not be enough…