Nicholas Kaufman’s tack in portraying Rodrigo Duterte as an aging family man isolated from loved ones comprised a curious turn in the Defense’s presentation at the just-concluded confirmation of charges hearing at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Having harped on the Prosecution’s supposed use of rhetoric and hyperbole to cover what he...
Author: Rosario A. Garcellano (Rosario Garcellano)
Post
The Veep’s declared run for No. 1 and her ‘ready’ running mate
Vice President Sara Duterte’s announcement of her presidential run in 2028 was hardly unexpected. She has been projected as front-runner; her approval ratings stay strong despite her questioned disbursement of P612 million in confidential funds taken from taxpayer money. The continuing absence of explanation for the disbursement is again in prime spot among the burning issues...
Post
Collective calls for accountability on various fronts mark February
The past year ended with a whimper. The public pressure brought to bear on the administration to produce results in assorted inquiries into the corruption scandal did not amount to much (and now requires recalibration). To be sure, due process takes time (in these parts, too long a time). But with the huge amounts of...
An unfinished flood control project in Tagbac, Jaro District in Iloilo City —PHOTO BY ARNOLD ALMACEN
Post
On the cusp of 2026, where are we at in the corruption scandal?
Catalina Cabral died under mysterious circumstances on Dec. 18 and Rossana Fajardo has quit the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) effective today, Dec. 30. Where are we at in the inquiry into the corruption scandal involving the institutionalized looting of public coffers? Christmas has come and gone and the new year approaches on winged feet,...
Post
Committed writing and the necessity of resistance
EDITOR’S NOTE: These remarks were delivered as a message from the family at the close of the 5th Edel Garcellano Conference with the theme “Resistance, Contradiction and Critique: Committed Writing Now,” held at the Ateneo de Manila University last Nov. 29. It’s extraordinary that the conference honoring Edel Garcellano and his work is now on...
Post
Let’s hear it from the President’s mouth
In a surprising turn, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. personally announced the Sandiganbayan’s issuance of warrants for the arrest of ex-Ako Bicol Rep. Zaldy Co and 17 others in connection with an anomalous flood control project in Naujan, Oriental Mindoro. It was an obvious effort to demonstrate control of the raging corruption scandal. But in the...
Post
Lost lives, lost homes, lost livelihoods
One day in the 1990s after rivers of lahar streamed from the slopes of Mount Pinatubo and buried many homes in Pampanga, I was peering through a second-floor window below my eye level. The ground was warm beneath my sneakers as I stooped to look into a bedroom with a double bed and its tousled...
Post
Evidence deemed insufficient after all these years: Enrile et al. cleared in ₱10B pork barrel scam
Distressing is the news that Juan Ponce Enrile and 34 others had been cleared of graft charges in connection with the ₱10-billion pork barrel scam exposed by the Inquirer in 2013. It aggravates Filipinos’ growing impatience with ongoing official inquiries into the raging trillion-peso corruption scandal involving flood control and other infra projects. It seems...
Post
Pablo Tariman kept the music playing
At Gallery MiraNila in Quezon City on Oct. 1, the hardbound volume “Encounters in the Arts” was available for sale at the registration corner for “Cecile Licad Up Close.” But the man behind both the book of reportage and the piano concert was elsewhere—quite out of character, being hands-on if not OC at each endeavor...
Post
To demand the facts and make correct sense of the corruption scandal
So much stuff to process, so little time before the next explosive detail erupts. Filipinos are called upon to make correct sense of the corruption scandal now approaching crisis proportions. That means educating themselves in how the plunder of taxpayer money was pulled off in flood control and other infra projects, and by whom, and...