Mary Jane Veloso’s return to her motherland under a prisoner transfer agreement between Indonesia and the Philippines is the ultimate Christmas gift to those who love her. After close to 15 years of imprisonment, she is now 39. Her parents have aged; her two sons approached adulthood beyond her motherly embrace. But the death row...
Category: Opinion
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Who will save us from the bicam?
The bicameral conference committee (bicam) is the most powerful and the weakest phase in our budgeting process. It is in the bicam where vested interests not only lurk but also come to fruition. Without benefit of deliberations, its members reduce the funding of agencies, transfer funds from one program to another, defund programs, and increase...
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Words of rage and murder
The once-formidable UniTeam continues to implode, providing circus-like spectacle as the country tries to get back on its feet after the devastation wrought by an unusual cluster of weather disturbances. In a virtual presser that began shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday in the House of Representatives, an enraged Vice President Sara Duterte unleashed startling words...
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Election parallels: Does a bad world need a bad guy?
The world is in shock, the headlines say, in reporting that Donald Trump has decisively won the US presidential election and defied the odds once more, this time in convincing fashion. As soon as the trend was clear, congratulatory messages from world leaders started coming in, in apparent relief that the result was unassailable and...
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No such thing as ‘plain rice’
Makò Micro-Press held a zine-making workshop for Masipag farmers and urban poor gardeners from Payatas in Santa Rosa, Nueva Ecija, four Saturdays ago, and I remain in awe of how palay seeds and the idea of small, independent presses weave together so well. I must admit that I knew very little of rice farming prior...
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Scum returns, to stay?
The ebb and flow of history is such that the scum that was washed away eventually returns to shore. The problem is, unless we are able to clean the Sea of Human Nature, it comes back thicker and in greater volume. A cursory survey of current events makes one realize that everything has happened before....
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Risa, Leni show the way
True to form, Sen. Risa Hontiveros battled mightily to prevent the dignity of the Senate, such as what it has become, from being fully shredded at the start of the inquiry into extrajudicial killings during Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal “war on drugs.” But for Hontiveros’ efforts the upper chamber would have been in complete thrall to...
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Story for our times
Kerwin Espinosa’s testimony at the Oct. 11 hearing of the House of Representatives’ quad committee dredged an 8-year-old case from the swamp of oblivion. The killing by state forces of his father, Mayor Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte, while incarcerated at the Baybay Sub-Provincial Jail, was a shocking development in President Rodrigo Duterte’s young administration....
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Transitioning away from fossil fuels must be rapid, equitable and just
September saw high-level meetings seeking to steer the course of human civilization’s future amid multiple global challenges. More than 190 member-states of the United Nations came together for the annual UN General Assembly in New York. In the same city, governments, corporations, and civil society organizations participated in the subsequent Summit of the Future and...
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‘Sa Prisinto Ka Na Magpaliwanag’ and Other Filipino Myths
There always comes a point when those in power make a high-profile arrest, as shown in the current and recent administrations. It was Joseph Estrada in Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s time, Arroyo in Benigno Aquino III’s time, and Leila de Lima in Rodrigo Duterte’s time. Now, under Ferdinand Marcos Jr., we have Alice Guo and Pastor...