Amid loud rumors of another shakeup in its leadership, the Senate convened on Monday as an impeachment court to try Vice President Sara Duterte. The court immediately ordered that a writ of summons be issued to Duterte to respond to the articles of impeachment against her. She had skipped the entire impeachment proceedings of the House...
Tag: justice
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Unanimous vote for articles of impeachment vs VP Duterte
The impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte is one step away from being tried in the Senate, with the House justice committee unanimously approving on Monday the committee report finding probable cause to impeach her. It took almost two hours before 55 members of the committee voted unanimously for the amended committee report and...
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Duterte loses ICC appeal, remains in detention in The Hague
The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled on Wednesday that the court had jurisdiction over the case against former president Rodrigo Duterte, keeping him in detention in the Netherlands and bringing him closer to a possible trial for crimes against humanity for his brutal war on drugs in the Philippines. The ICC...
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The everyday absurdity of ‘accidents’ on the road
Last March 3, a 22-wheeler trailer truck spun out of control and hit the island in front of Miriam College on Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City at 2:58 a.m., spilling its load of tons of sacks of chicken-feed additives and causing unusually heavy traffic up to around 10 a.m. According to reports, nobody was killed...
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At the ICC, a portrait of the strongman as aging family man
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...
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Thoughts on the standees of Rodrigo Duterte and Leila de Lima
When I first saw the Duterte standees, I almost cried laughing. Even funnier is how his supporters have made different versions of “Tatay Digs”—such as the thin and flimsy one, faded under the sun, in front of their supposed pobre residence in Davao City; the one at the head of a table somewhere in the...
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Gen Z and activism: Fighting against corruption
First of two parts The call to jail the crooks in the flood-control corruption scandal thundered above all others in a setting intended to highlight athletic excellence and school pride, not political defiance: “Ikulong na ’yan, mga kurakot!” It was halftime during the UAAP (University Athletic Association of the Philippines) basketball match between the University...
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16 years on, the Maguindanao massacre continues to provide lessons to campus journalists
PILI, CAMARINES SUR—Journalism student Jevan Dex Miranda was a child when the inconceivable happened: bodies unearthed by a backhoe, families grieving while searching for their loved ones, and headlines marking the Philippines as the setting of the deadliest single attack on journalists in world history. Miranda was among the students, human rights advocates and media...
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Prayer rally in Naga calls for justice and accountability in flood control mess
NAGA CITY—John Oliver Mimay, 32, and 13 others travelled for five hours from the town of Irosin in Sorsogon to this city to join a prayer rally against the widespread corruption involving politicians in infrastructure projects undertaken by the Department of Public Works and Highways and private contractors. The group composed of volunteers from the...
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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...