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...
Category: Opinion
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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...
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The greatest source of economic and social inequality
Holding title to property is the greatest source of economic and social inequality. Holding no title of any kind, whether to property or to social or academic standing, is a sure indication of being on the fringes, a ticket to poverty. Being king or emperor, or general or president, or doctor or attorney or engineer—titles...
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Norma Rae, Sister Stella L, and newspaper union organizing under martial law
They said it couldn’t be done. It was martial law, after all, and among many freedoms suppressed by Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s repressive regime (1965-1986) was the right to organize a legitimate union. Strikes were banned, and only government-friendly unions were recognized. But a hardy group of journalists at the Journal group of publications (Times Journal,...
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Detention, ‘town arrest’ under martial law
It was a comfortless humid night in July 1974 in Zamboanga City when agents of the National Intelligence Security Agency (Nisa) arrested me. I was then a philosophy undergraduate student and an activist at the University of the Philippines Diliman. I was visiting my mother’s hometown to attend the funeral of my maternal grandmother, Isabel...
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What’s the endgame for electoral fraud?
Electoral fraud, also called vote rigging, voter fraud or election manipulation, involves illegal interference in the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. Through the TNTrio’s scrutiny of hard data coming from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) itself and...
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Death by drowning in Laguna de Bay
Friday on ANC, the skipper of the Aya Express, Donald Anain, recounts what happened in the waters of Laguna de Bay off Binangonan, Rizal, on July 27. Snippets of the tragedy were reported by some survivors a day earlier, more or less jibing with Anain’s account of how, buffeted by strong winds, the motorized banca...
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A new path for Southeast Asian civil society engagement with Asean
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) marks its 56th year in 2023 and holds its 43rd summit of leaders in September in Jakarta, the second such meeting of the year. Asean is guided by these principles drawn up in 1976: mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, and national identity of all...
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The state of our nation
My students found it very difficult to identify two of the current administration’s notable accomplishments in public finance. I can appreciate their difficulties. The budgetary deficit in 2022 was a staggering P1.61 trillion, or 7.33% of GDP. Government spent P5.16 trillion last year but raised only P3.54 trillion in revenues. I cannot help but wonder why...
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Poverty alleviation is at the mercy of political patronage
On July 10, the disbarred lawyer Lorenzo “Larry” Gadon was sworn in as presidential adviser on poverty alleviation. After nearly a month of public adverse reactions to Gadon’s appointment, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has made his priorities clear: to honor political patronage over providing credible leadership in addressing poverty in the Philippines. Critics claim that...