Days before the May 18 proclamation of the senators-elect, comeback kid JV Ejercito, No. 10 in the Senate’s “Magic 12,” noted a prickly point: the continuing detention of Sen. Leila de Lima on charges of taking drug money to fund her senatorial campaign in the 2016 elections. “Hopefully,” Ejercito was quoted as saying in CNN...
Marcosian martial law made us Humpty Dumpty and we will never be put back together again. It broke us in ways so deep and permanent no amount of talk about reconciliation and unity will ever make us whole. But we can cope with it in a very Filipino way. We have always been described as...
Presumptive president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. flew on Monday to Melbourne in Australia where his youngest son Vincent, 25, is preparing to start studies for a Juris Doctor degree at the University of Melbourne, according to reports in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. On Tuesday, protesters picketed outside the Victoria One apartment building where...
Our political party system is flabby, almost irrelevant. -Elections 2022 – Political parties are a mere supplement to the fluid alliances of dynastic families serving as the main political machine for churning out votes in national elections 2022. At the local level, the clan of the moment can secure for the family the posts of governor,...
My dearest Kim, I am deeply sorry that I failed you as a grandfather and guide.You were voting for the first time, and I could sense your exuberance in finally participating in a momentous event in our country’s history, in being able to help shore up a badly battered democracy, in restoring respect and decency...
Spurious last-ditch reports of candidates being disqualified and a buildup of fabricated vote tallies of presidential contenders took hold of social media as voters trooped to precincts on Monday. The misleading and deceptive narratives on election day largely targeted now presumptive president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his rival, Vice President Leni Robredo; their running mates,...
Philippine rural development has basically been the handiwork of colonialism and world capitalism. But the dominant role of external forces in development is not simply a colonial extension. Internal structures having already been laid in place by colonialism, they were able to continuously reproduce themselves in harmony with the external demands of the global capitalist...
From surprise and shock to outrage, netizens have reacted to the way the Commission on Elections’ partial and unofficial results of the May 9 voting for national officials were being presented and reported by broadcast networks. They cited an intriguing pattern in the percentage ratios of incoming votes of frontrunner Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice...
I knew this year’s elections would be different from all the others that we’ve had, but I didn’t want to make expectations. Elections in this country are like some exotic cultural rituals—festive and intoxicating events that teeter on the edge of total chaos. How we find a method to the madness—and survive—is a source of...
Morning of Election Day on Monday did not proceed well for many seniors and persons with disabilities (PWDs), who discovered that there were no vote counting machines (VCMs) in the senior voting areas, and if there were, the machines broke down early. Here are personal accounts of Filipinos in their 70s who went out to...
