The recent release on bail of former senator Leila de Lima after more than six years of imprisonment shows the uneven application of laws based on legal maxims that are not facts or proven theories. De Lima was jailed on the presumption of guilt, not innocence, by the powers that be, based mainly on the...
Category: Opinion
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The crisis in Philippine education began 120 years ago
In the results of the 2022 Pisa study on the state of learning and equity in education worldwide released last Dec. 5, the average scores of Filipino 15-year-old students were about the same as those in 2018. There was no significant change in the rankings of students scoring below a baseline level of proficiency (Level...
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When the wheels of justice grind
EDITOR’S NOTE: The detained former senator Leila de Lima was granted bail by Judge Gener Gito today, Nov. 13. Gito is the presiding judge of Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court Branch 206, which will now hear the last of the three drug cases filed against her. The other two have been dismissed. CoverStory is republishing...
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ‘promised land’
Both the western and local media are generally pro-Israel in their reporting on the Israeli-Hamas war. That should be the Israeli-Palestinian war because both sides don’t care about civilian casualties, including children and infants. On the other hand, there is a Palestinian bias in Arab/Muslim countries although admittedly, my main source is Al Jazeera and...
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Innocents dying in ‘a tragedy of war’
A bit of recent CNN footage on Gaza partially shows three children laid out on their back, their tiny legs and feet looking vulnerable. It takes only seconds—blink, and you miss it—but the fleeting footage of the small corpses is a graphic display of Israel’s relentless moves to wipe Hamas off the face of the...
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End Israeli apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza, and free Palestine
I am 82, I deserve to retire. Words don’t flow freely anymore. Political passions have to make way for naps and junk novels. But political events have a way of stirring passions. More than 7,000 Palestinians dead from 6,000 bombs raining down their heads! I can’t stay quiet in the face of this. Many profound,...
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When public money is spent confidentially
The Office of Vice President Sara Duterte has denied her involvement in the recent disruption of traffic on Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City purportedly to allow her convoy to pass unhampered. By then the video showing all sorts of vehicles at full stop on the busy avenue had, in the common parlance, gone viral, accompanied...
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Pity this nation
Ours is a country of failed institutions. Let us cite two of many—Congress and the Commission on Elections (Comelec). Congress is responsible for producing legislation to ensure that the spirit of the Philippine Constitution is upheld. Yet, 36 years after the ratification of the Constitution, there is yet no enabling law prohibiting political dynasties. The...
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What to Know: Are confidential funds secret funds not subject to audit?
The use of confidential funds (CF) by the Office of Vice President Sara Duterte, concurrently the secretary of education, continues to be in the news and in social media posts. While most of the comments dwell on the P125 million in confidential funds supposedly spent in an 11-day period in December 2022, among the other...
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Yes, we have no tomato, we have no tomato today
Friends and I have been comparing online what we were spending on food, what we were scrimping on, what little joys and luxuries we decided to do without. And we all agreed about making these sacrifices during these times, but what about the greater number of indigent Filipinos? What were they eating given the rising...
